Siblings

Celebrating National Siblings Day with pieces from Perie Longo, Helen Vo-Dinh, and Gail DiMaggio.

TRANSCRIPT

April 10th is National Siblings Day. It commemorates the special bond between siblings. Claudia Evart created National Siblings Day in 1995 to honor and celebrate her brother and sister, Alan and Lisette, who died young. April 10th is her sister Lisette’s birthday. This episode of Burning Bright features pieces that remember siblings as they were.

Perie Longo said, “I idolized my siblings, especially my older sister.” Here’s Perie’s poem “Taking Selfies with my Big Sister during Spring Thaw in Minnesota” that she wrote after visiting her sister.

Her memory has become a little
like melting snow. Dreamlike, a few years
since we’ve been together, time is an origami bird
folded in on itself. Flying frightens her,
as does the field behind my house in California
she does remember. Any minute it could catch fire.
Worse, it could bury me
like the one on the news. You should think
about moving back. You should think…

She repeats everything at least twice.
Once a nurse, she’s used to giving advice.
Next thing, we’re kids and mother appears.
My sister begins a litany of old miseries.
Words darken her room in the complex
where she’s come to live in her 80’s.
But she loved us, I say, between her storms.

I show her latest pictures of my grandchildren
on the iPhone, and one I just took walking
along the Zumbro river outside her window
where two ducks feed over the reflection
of bare trees. Let’s take a selfie to remember
today, I smile. Face to face, cheeks touching,

I snap one picture after another. She laughs
as long ago, not that, not that. Our laughter
disperses shadows, echoes down the long hallway
of closed doors.

She chooses a favorite. Not bad for an old lady.
Duckies, I suggest, going with the flow.
She repeats, going with the flow. I brush a feather
from her damp face in this age
where everything gets saved. Someplace.

From Passager’s 2023 Poetry Contest issue, “Taking Selfies with my Big Sister during Spring Thaw in Minnesota” by Perie Longo.

As children, Helen Vo-Dinh and her sister gave each other nicknames, Melon and Ice, respectively. In this excerpt from Helen’s piece “Ice and the Warrior Beetles,” she refers to Bogus, the voice in her sister’s head.

Around noon Ice calls and surprises me.
“Melon, let’s go to Roy’s for strawberry shortcake with ice cream.”
“You want to go out? What about your fissures, Ice?”
“You know it was all a mistake. Bogus said I don’t have fissures after all. And he told me I don’t have Warrior Beetles after all. They’re stinkbugs. Just like yours.”
“But I liked those Warrior Beetles, Ice!”
“Well, maybe you did, but not me! You’re strange, Melon.”
“And Bogus?”
“He’s resting!”
“I hope he takes a long vacation. Get your coat on. I’m on my way.”
I will make the most of this time when Ice is almost normal. We will go for a leisurely drive along the river, and Ice will exclaim at the sycamore trees and the water. She will roll down the window and sniff the air. She has not been out of her house for years. She is like one awakening from a nightmare without realizing it. We will order bean soup at White’s Deli, then shop at the mall. She will choose men’s shoes which are five sizes too large, and triple XXL pants which hang on her thin frame.
“Nothing tight, nothing tight,” she’ll insist.
On the way home we’ll stop for more ice cream and reminisce about our childhoods, the big drafty house at Bay Shore, our reserved parents. This kind of conversation with Ice always seems so sane.
“Do you remember . . . . ” I’ll begin.
And Ice will gasp and say, “You have such a good memory, Melon!” and we will laugh aloud together. For a few days, maybe even a few weeks, I will have my big sister back.

An excerpt from Helen Vo-Dinh’s story “Ice and the Warrior Beetles,” from Passager’s Winter 2014 issue.

GaiI DiMaggio said that when she used to meditate and her mind would wander, she learned the Buddhist practice of metta: choosing one person, dog, star, or grain of sand to focus on. She applied that same principle to her writing, focusing on a detail, a person’s character trait, their weirdness, their lovable, infuriating, everyday self… with the hope that it might lighten their suffering. Here’s Gail’s poem “Metta for My Brother Peter Who Died.”

tragically. Believe me, I remember.
But I’d rather remember him at 3, a day
I’m left in charge and sulking
when suddenly I hear
slam, and all at once, bang and I run
to the gaping cellar where he’s sprawled
on the landing, with a grin
like I should join him in the ecstasy
of falling seventeen steps. And then he grew up
and up into a big man’s voice,
a tireless, muscled body
wrapped around that core of joy.
And then that tragedy I mentioned.
His son describes how,
when they broke the news at work,
a young machinist sat down hard,
kept shaking his head, kept whispering No.
Peter deserved a heaven
built of stairs
one where he can start at the top,
fling himself down,
and stick the landing
just so he can jump up and do it again.
May I remember him
that way. My brother, Peter,
who never saw a difference
between falling and flight.

From Passager’s 2021 Poetry Contest issue, “Metta for My Brother Peter who Died” by Gail DiMaggio.

Three pieces to remind us that no matter what’s happened along the way, let’s remember our siblings with love.

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For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Asher, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.

Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.