Sister Selves: Sitting With Own Ghosts
About a year ago, on a windy night in October, I read a book to my youngest son. The story, Zen Ghosts by John J. Muth, was about 3 children on Halloween, and it had another Buddhist story embedded inside of it: the tale of a Chinese girl, Senjo, who falls in love with her childhood best friend, Ochu. All is fine in the tale until Senjo’s dad becomes ill and unable to work, and her parents require that she marry someone else, a prosperous man named Henryo. Upon hearing this horrible news, Ochu leaves the village immediately, too heartbroken to say goodbye to Senjo. But as he starts his journey, exiting town in the moonlight on the riverway, whom should he see running on the banks but Senjo? They escape together and go on to raise two children happily in exile. Eventually, they decide to return to their parents, hopeful for forgiveness. At this point, they’re in for a surprise. When Senjo’s father opens the door to Ochu, he says, after hearing Ochu’s tale, “What are you talking about? From the time you left the village, Senjo has been sick in bed. She’s unable to speak…I will bring her to you.” And he does, and then, there, the two Senjos stand face to face, their arms raised in a joyous pose marking their reunion. Muth has rendered this scene in pastel watercolors; both women have the same hair, but their robes feature different-colored butterflies: Senjo the mother’s has blue butterflies, daughter Senjo’s are purple. They lift off the cloth, flying together.
The reader is, of course, left to wonder, which is real? Who is the true Senjo? And then if you turn to the back of the book, as we did, you learn in the postscript that this type of story is called a koan and that stories like it, ones that are paradoxes or questions, have been a part of the Zen Buddhist practice since the 1200s. They are meant to be vague, perplexing, inspiring. They are meant to live, it seems, in the space between the heart and the mind, the known and the unknown. They’re prized.
I love learning of anything that calls out my shame, that sheds light on whatever my Yankee, over-achievement-oriented upbringing life might have vilified. “Don’t ruminate on what you didn’t do.” I was taught. “Live in the now.” But this story doesn’t reduce the sister self. And it makes me want to take a closer look at mine. After all, she’s been living alongside me for years, experiencing multiple aspects of existence.
And that sister self, she’s done a lot. So much. She took the trips that I didn’t; she closed wedding toasts to her friends with brilliant jokes, the ones that always occurred to me the next day. When I lived in a cozy, cluttered house, hers was spacious and sunny. Instead of being rational and calm, her husband was wild, emotional. He might stay up all night discussing his feelings by the fire. This sister self had the guts to pitch the Argentinian article to the New York Times travel section, the one that starts with her losing her bathing suit in the Andes mountains and recovering it in the Alvear Palace. She hustled to get her masters in secondary education, instead of doing what I did, and delaying the acceptance, not once, but twice, so I could both have and then raise my first child. She’s done so much, this sister self. Can you see her now, going back to try out for that folk singing group in college? She stands in front of the seniors and sings “Come a Long Way” by Michelle Shocked. Bonnie Raitt’s “Woman Be Wise.”
But that’s general. I’ll trace our relationship a bit for you, chronologically. In my 20’s, my sister self was busy. She went right into the Peace Corps after college. She took that slightly boring, but higher-profile publishing job. You two discussed work at night, comparing notes and which world suited you best. “Your job has prestige,” you told your sister self. “But it’s so boring!” she answered. “You’re writing about tennis racquets and makeovers, but your byline is out there: on the newsstands. At the airport!” On the weekends, when you couldn’t decide whether to be in the city or the woods, she did whatever you couldn’t. From your sleeping bag, you’d look into the stars and see her, vividly, at that party and in that dress you’d been waiting to wear, dancing to your favorite Prince songs before walking home at sunrise. And while she, like you, would have also chosen to marry the husband you did, she might have had delayed the engagement a bit, so that, when she collided in the elevator with that gorgeous curly-haired head marketer at a trade show, she wouldn’t yet have had an engagement band on her finger. With the liberty to kiss him right then and there, she might have done it, maybe even lived in Ventura with him for a little while. Eventually, though, she would’ve moved back East: skyscrapers on the beach — and the marketer — not for either of you.
In your thirties, your sister self was more elusive. You were so busy that she was actually hard to find. She behaved kind of like those three babies who grew in your stomach: she’d lie quiet, all day, as you ran around changing diapers, zipping toddlers into snowsuits coats, brainstorming poetry lesson plans. She was quiet as you learned how to co-parent with your husband, when you fought about whether Saturday mornings were for reading the newspaper or lacing up soccer cleats, about whether his plan to cut down those trees and build a back patio by hand right now — this week, this weekend — was a good idea. But then, in the middle of the night, when you rose with the moonlight to nurse a baby, holding him in the silent dark, your sister self would pop up. “Hello!” She’d tell you about some of her recent escapades, like how she always got the kids’ artwork on the walls right away. How she never pushed her students too far. How she could keep her drinks to only 1.5 glasses each night. How she was keeping up with her emails and thank you notes. And sometimes, she spoke from a different town or city: Colorado? San Francisco? These conversations were a little difficult for you, but luckily you always fell asleep while she was talking.
Now, I’m in my forties. My sister self is here, as always, but, having already lived a lot, she’s calmed down. She’s not married to a different person or living in a different place. She’s still doing a few things I’m not. For one, she’s raising the rescue dog that I couldn’t. She figured out how to train her so that she doesn’t bite or scare her son’s friends. She’s given away a lot of her clothes and has a simple wardrobe. She knows that retail isn’t really therapy, that she has enough shoes. While I plod along, failing at trying to “fix” my flesh and blood sister, my sister self has released this woman to live her own life, to have her own relationship with the parents we share. My 40ish sister self forced our son to stick with piano, and there he is, playing “Root Beer Rag” with his school jazz band. But she did also acknowledge recently, when she popped in to hear him practicing guitar, seeing his too-long adolescent wavy hair bent over the strings, that maybe, perhaps, I was right to let him choose his own instrument. Even if he has to start at the bottom with “Stairway to Heaven.” Most recently, in church, my sister self and I got really close. While I watched another mother sing to the congregation, my sister self was suddenly a few feet away from me, part of the song, crooning something by the Walin’ Jennys. Was she singing “Once Voice”? Was it now December? We were only a few feet apart.
Zen Ghosts could be a classic ghost story, one that’s meant to be scary. And any other year, I’m sure I would so easily be haunted by my woulda-shoulda-road-not-taken sister self, taunting me from the outskirts of my consciousness. But on this windy 2020 pre-Halloween and pre-election evening, I’m just not. The stakes in today’s world are different, the game has changed, and choosing the wrong job or failing somewhat routinely at parenthood just doesn’t seem so devastating anymore. Gratitude, service, and empathy, always important, are grounding forces now. And they’ve helped me to see, out there on some misty horizon, of a whole new kind of sister self: someone who this time is right out in front — rather than behind or beside — me.
She’s talking, and if I’m quiet, I can hear her. She’s saying things like: if you’re so worried about things, do more. Donate to the Equal Justice Initiative; fight voter suppression; volunteer to support all the sisters who have either lost or left their jobs since this pandemic started. Read more of those anti-racism books, and speak up, too. Engage in conversations about race and bias, break your white silence not just every once in a while, but all the time. You quit drinking for a while, and it felt good, right? So keep going! She’s getting louder, over there in her bright spectral robes. “I’m worried too,” she notes, about the newest sister in the Supreme Court, the one who may take away — from every sister — the right to choose. “But send emails and rally others. March in whatever Women’s March comes next — recruit friends. Be a better sister,” she encourages, “not only to your flesh and blood sisters, but to each and every one of us out there.”
One day, I’ll meet that sister in the sunlight. Perhaps, I’ll also meet yours. Together, we can ask: which one is the real one?
