{"id":398,"date":"2012-06-10T04:35:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-10T04:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2012\/06\/10\/she-felt-like-cheering"},"modified":"2015-12-16T23:23:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T04:23:20","slug":"she-felt-like-cheering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/","title":{"rendered":"She felt like cheering"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have three half-siblings. \u00a0I know I\u2019ve told you that before, probably lots of times. My half-siblings are a decent bit older than me, so growing up, they often seemed more like uncles and an aunt. \u00a0I was an only child, mostly. \u00a0But my mother came from a big family, and she had an identical twin sister named Tina. Though Tina lived in California and we lived in Oklahoma, she and my mother did their best to make sure that their children, my cousins Sarah and Katie and I, would feel close as we grew up. \u00a0I fell in love with the West Coast \u00a0– and, I\u2019m sure, wound up living here – because of trips we took to visit Tina and her family when I was a kid.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

In the mornings, when it\u2019s still cool outside, Tina\u2019s neighborhood smells like eucalyptus. \u00a0In the afternoons, Katie and I would walk through the backyard to old convenience store across the street, where we would buy beef jerky from a plastic tub. \u00a0There\u2019s now a fancy grocery store where the convenience store used to be, but a little further down the street is a mall that still looks pretty much the same, a outdoor mall, something we didn\u2019t have in Oklahoma. \u00a0It was at that mall that Sarah and I, then pre-teens, went on my first and only shoplifting spree. \u00a0We got a paper shopping bag at a department store, put my denim jacket in it, and then proceeded to hit a few other stores, hiding our loot under the jacket. \u00a0Our primary target was a Hallmark shop, where I scored a few calligraphy pens and a tiny carpenter\u2019s bubble level<\/a> on a keychain, the kind with yellow liquid in a clear tube. \u00a0I had no idea what a level was, but it looked awesome, and I was too scared of being caught to spend a lot of time puzzling over it before I shoved it into the bag. \u00a0Our mothers didn\u2019t catch us, but back at Tina\u2019s house, with our booty stashed safely in the closet, I was still terrified. \u00a0I was not cut out for a life in crime. \u00a0I don\u2019t know if Tina ever found out about what we did, but I remember that closet so clearly. \u00a0I remember her\u00a0house so clearly, the way it smells, the way it slopes slightly toward the street, so that every door needs a doorstop. When I\u2019m falling asleep, I sometimes picture myself there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

That\u2019s my mother on the left in both of the pictures, and Tina on the right. \u00a0They didn\u2019t always dress alike, but they weren\u2019t opposed to it. \u00a0Actually, the older they got, the more often they did. \u00a0They even wore their hair the same way: a couple of inches below the shoulder, usually pulled back into a ponytail. There\u2019s a set of elderly twins who are famous around San Francisco, Marian and Vivian Brown<\/a>, and we ran into them once in Union Square, both impeccably dressed<\/a>. \u00a0My twins are not the type to pencil in their eyebrows or go for animal-skin cowboy hats, but I always pictured them getting old together the way the Brown twins have, making a scene, making trouble.<\/p>\n

In early February, Tina was diagnosed suddenly with pancreatic cancer. She went to my mother\u2019s house in Oklahoma to stay for a while and receive treatment. \u00a0My cousins and I took turns flying in to help, and we tried our best not to spend too much time Googling pancreatic cancer, because that kind of thing will scare the crap out of you. But it was hard to ignore the fact that, as all the literature says, the illness moves quickly. \u00a0Tina passed away at home, my mother\u2019s home, on May 29, with five of us around her.<\/p>\n

The Internet is an awkward place to write about death. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t have the right weight. \u00a0I don\u2019t like it.\u00a0But I\u2019ve been trying to figure out what to write here instead, and nothing else came. \u00a0Over the past few months, whenever I\u2019ve\u00a0told someone about Tina, it\u2019s been hard to explain why it should feel so difficult to lose an aunt, as opposed to, say, a parent. \u00a0For me, Tina was somewhere between the two. In high school biology, when I learned about genes and DNA, I remember being thrilled by the thought that my mother and Tina had identical DNA, and that, maybe, on some level that an actual scientist would probably scoff at, it meant that Katie and Sarah were my half-sisters. \u00a0I loved that idea. Maybe, on that same questionable level, it meant that Tina was more than my aunt.<\/p>\n

She was the only person in the world who called me Margaret, my legal name. \u00a0She sort of sang it, actually, Maaaaar-GRIT<\/i>, her voice rising as she went. \u00a0When I was in college, I lived with her during the summers. \u00a0She introduced me to Dungeness crab and to the giant chocolate-covered coconut macaroons at Max\u2019s<\/a>. \u00a0She was the first person I knew who really loved<\/i> the place where she lived. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t sound like much to say, but it had never occurred to me that a person could fall in love with a city and actually get to live<\/i> there, not just visit. \u00a0I didn\u2019t dislike Oklahoma City, but I didn\u2019t love it, and my parents didn\u2019t, either. \u00a0I didn\u2019t know what it might be like to feel another way. \u00a0But\u00a0Tina and I were once driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, and I remember her saying that she never got tired of it, of that drive, even after forty years in the Bay Area, and that she each time she crossed the bridge, she felt like cheering, I LIVE HERE!<\/i>\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know then that Seattle would make me feel that way, that it would be my place. But now, whenever I catch myself silently cheering, I think of her.<\/p>\n

I also think of Tina when I cook in my cast-iron skillets, because the summer that I was twenty and living at her house, I once used a cast-iron skillet and then left it overnight, rinsed but still dirty, in her white kitchen sink. \u00a0The next morning, when she found it there, she also found beneath it a dark, angry ring of rust that hung on for months. \u00a0I am now a champ at the prompt cleaning and drying of cast-iron skillets.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

I don\u2019t know who took this picture, but I found it on Tina\u2019s desk last weekend. \u00a0It must have been taken in the 80s, because this was her hairstyle then. \u00a0I love the lens flare, how relaxed she looks, how pretty she was. \u00a0She looked very different when I last saw her, but she was still beautiful.<\/p>\n

About a month ago, when the author Maurice Sendak died, NPR re-released a number of interviews<\/a> that he did over the years with Terry Gross of Fresh Air<\/i>. \u00a0I listened to all of them, and I listened twice to the last one. (It starts about 27 minutes in.) \u00a0I hope I can someday feel the way he did about aging and dying. I\u2019ve\u00a0known so many people who, like Tina, didn\u2019t really get a chance to get old. There was something he said that I keep thinking about:\u00a0“I don\u2019t believe in an afterlife, but\u00a0I still fully expect to see my brother again.” Most days, I don\u2019t believe in an afterlife, either, but I hope for my mother, and for all of us, that Mr. Sendak was\u00a0right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have three half-siblings. \u00a0I know I\u2019ve told you that before, probably lots of times. My half-siblings are a decent bit older than me, so growing up, they often seemed more like uncles and an aunt. \u00a0I was an only child, mostly. \u00a0But my mother came from a big family, and she had an identical twin sister named Tina. Though Tina lived in California and we lived in Oklahoma, she and my mother did their best to make sure that their children, my cousins Sarah and Katie and I, would feel close as we grew up. \u00a0I fell in love with the West Coast \u00a0– and, I\u2019m sure, wound up living here – because of trips we took to visit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[70,386,383,385,115,377,384],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nShe felt like cheering | Orangette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"She felt like cheering | Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have three half-siblings. \u00a0I know I\u2019ve told you that before, probably lots of times. My half-siblings are a decent bit older than me, so growing up, they often seemed more like uncles and an aunt. \u00a0I was an only child, mostly. \u00a0But my mother came from a big family, and she had an identical twin sister named Tina. Though Tina lived in California and we lived in Oklahoma, she and my mother did their best to make sure that their children, my cousins Sarah and Katie and I, would feel close as we grew up. \u00a0I fell in love with the West Coast \u00a0– and, I\u2019m sure, wound up living here – because of trips we took to visit…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/molly.wizenberg\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-10T04:35:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-12-17T04:23:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/b8a27-photo18crop1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1515\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1539\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@mollyorangette\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@mollyorangette\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Molly\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/\",\"name\":\"Orangette\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/orangette.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/b8a27-photo18crop1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/orangette.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/b8a27-photo18crop1.jpg\",\"width\":1515,\"height\":1539},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/\",\"name\":\"She felt like cheering | Orangette\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-10T04:35:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-12-17T04:23:20+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/#\/schema\/person\/72d7c362f82fa0578c635d88a69d07fe\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"She felt like cheering\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/#\/schema\/person\/72d7c362f82fa0578c635d88a69d07fe\",\"name\":\"Molly\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/orangette.net\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/orangette.net\/author\/molly\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"She felt like cheering | Orangette","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2012\/06\/she-felt-like-cheering\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"She felt like cheering | Orangette","og_description":"I have three half-siblings. \u00a0I know I\u2019ve told you that before, probably lots of times. 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