Why am I waiting here like a fish?

This was the question McKenzie asked when I took too long to get ready for soccer practice.

Do fish wait for anything? For anyone?

Cat's first bath

Today the unnamed cat endured her first bath. Shower, actually. She lay patiently under the running water. At first I thought she was having a heart attack because she was so calm, but it turns out she actually enjoys showers. She meowed once -- "for the sixth time in her existence [since joining the White family]," according to Kenzie. It was a mild reaction to the ice cold shampoo in her fur.

Afterwards Dad and Kenzie scooped the wax out of her ears using a grand total of eleven Q-tips. Kenzie was totally grossed out by the wax and asked me to finish disposing of all the used cotton swabs, a task that separates the seven-year-olds from the 23-year-olds.

Persistence

Naming the new cat has been a recurring topic of conversation over break. McKenzie likes names that sparkle, like Crystal, Diamond and Star. Cat hasn't responded to these names, but Kenzie insists that she does. If you squeeze any cat long enough, she'll start talking. I took her contributions into account when announcing the cat's official name at the dinner table last night.

"Gia has been named Giella Spotte Diamond White," I said.

"We mixed Gia and Ella because we liked both," McKenzie said. "But White Diamond sounds better."

Now I had to come up with an excuse besides 'I don't want my cat to sound like a porn star.'

"But then you'd have to change your last name to Diamond."

"Dad," McKenzie said, "can we change our last name to Diamond?"

Merry happy Christmas

Conversation overheard between Big Sister Morgan and McKenzie at grandparents' Christmas party, after Grandpa distributed cards with checks in them:

McKenzie: Do you have an account?

Morgan: Yes.

McKenzie: Then give your checks to Dad.

Conversations like these make me nostalgic for the days when money was just a gift we saved to spend on useful things like bicycles, pet tamugachis, and college.

Not a cat passing through the TSA x-ray machine

Also not "Why my cat refuses to fly."

Or "Catproof the electric sockets, like, now!"

Untitled by McKenzie White

Knowing what it's not, interpret at will.

Cat Sitter report, part 3

Cat recovered. Turns out she was hiding behind bed the whole time.

"When are you coming home? It feels like forever," McKenzie said.

Headed home now, with Key lime pie surprise!

this post brought to you by Robert is Here coconut-pineapple milkshakes, and astoundingly functional cell towers in the ghetto boonies.

Cat Sitter report, part 2

Just returned from kayaking daytrip. Kenzie et al not picking up phone. Hopefully cat has been recovered.

flag concerned.

Cat Sitter report

About to embark on kayaking adventure in Islamorada, so this post will be short and sweet.

McKenzie just called with an official cat sitter report. Sascha/Gia/Spotte got loose in the house. "I wanted to let you know, but DON'T tell Mom."

Hallelujah, the cat's alive.

Child labor

My friend Jessie invited me on a weekday weekend trip to Islamorada. No sane person would say no, so I asked her where and when, and I'd find a cat sitter for however long we'd be gone.

Given her love for the cat, McKenzie seemed like the ideal sitter. She hadn't left the feline alone longer than a minute to go to the bathroom (she'd sprint over and back with her pants around her ankles to reduce lag time). The cat would either hate me or really, really love me after a couple days over-cared for by lil sis while I'm soakng up the sun in the keys with my ATL BFF. Worth the risk.

"Kenzie," I said, "I need you to watch the cat. For two days."

Before she could object to responsibility, I continued with a list of rules for the cat sitter (ten or so variants of "don't sit on the cat") and asked her how it sounded.

"Sounds good," she said, patting the cat's ears back with such a heavy hand the residue-weight left poor creature's ears folded flush to her head.

"I'll pay you five dollars for the night. OK?"

Her lips pursed in efforts to conceal a smile.

"OK!"

The cat jumped out of her arms and scuttered under the table on the far side of the room.

I'll be counting on Mom and Dad to listen for any howls or shrieks coming from the East wing. Hoping everything will be OK.

Mom's perfect pet

The cat has been here two days and barely eats. She hasn't shat once yet.

Could have some correlation with 24-7 supervision by a seven-year-old.

Holiday homecoming

Arrived home late last night. Cat shivered (out of fear, not the brutal 75 degree florida winter) in the front seat. Mom saw past the strategically placed magazine atop the carrying case, and circled my car to the passenger side like a tiger sizing up its prey. She opened the car door and asked what on earth was in the box. I told her it was a cub. She said I was not funny. McKenzie begged me to take it out. I asked Mom if she was OK, because her eyes looked like they would pop out of her head any second. Dad appeared out of nowhere, so I passed the crate to him and the family accompanied them inside as I continued to unload the car.

As I duckwalked to the house with a week's worth of overpacked luggage, Mom greeted me at the front door. Thankfully her eyes had retreated fully back into her skull.

"Courtney," she said, "it's a cat."

"Yes, Mom, I know. You said no dogs."

"But it's a full grown cat."

"Yeah, it's used. She's really great, though."

"I just didn't think you'd get a fully grown one. She's really sweet. And so beautiful."

When I got to my room, a towel had already been laid out for cub's food and water bowl. Welcome to the family, Cat.

An exception to never say never

Mom specifically instructed us to never bring home "anything that eats or shits." I'd been planning on adopting a dog for awhile, but decided Mom would be less inclined to disown me if I brought home a cat instead. So I adopted a used cat. She's a two year old bengal, descended from the Asian leopard cat with her inordinately large paws for bird catching.

Kenz had wanted a kitten, so I plan on telling my little sis that she's a leopard cub. Hopefully that will make her laugh and help break the ice with Mom.

Wish me luck.

On the subject of religion

McKenzie's babysitter, Ita, has been pushing my mom to have McKenzie sleep over for a weekend. When Mom told me this, I knew it was Ita's overt ploy to bring my sister to church. And that meant she and Mom would have their first conversation about religion. It would go something like this:

"They're going to have great music, dancing, and they'll even offer you snacks," Mom would say. "But don't believe anything they tell you. It's all bogus."

"What kinds of snacks?"

"Stale crackers and grape juice."

"Oh," McKenzie would say, setting down her crayons as if to consider Sunday morning alternatives. "Do I have to go?"

The Temptation of St. Anthony

Salvador Dali, 1946

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_temptation_of_St._Anthony_in_visual_arts#Dal.C3.AD

For the purposes of maintaining readership, I won't go into too great depth about religion on this blog. But I will tell you that my immediate family is mostly agnostic, bookended by a set of Jewish-by-blood, athiest-by-brain grandparents and two born-again grandparents who routinely tune into Jerry Falwell reruns. The range of religious perspectives in my family connotes the variability of modern man's theological path.

My parents invested in a private education for Morgan and me, at a school that happened to be affiliated with the Episcopalian church. They sent us there because it was the best academic education we could get. Sending two kids to Saint Mark's for eleven years added up to a sizeable fortune that should keep our entire family in good standing with God for a while. At least until they have to decide between Episcopalian and Catholic grade school for Kenz.

Inclusive of the religious aspects of our education, I am grateful for every bit of the experience. We'd attend chapel daily, and on Wednesdays we'd sit through an hour or so of mass depending on the time of year. Fuzzy-faced and jolly Father Ralph ran services. Entertaining a crowd of hundreds in a hot church seemed to be as natural to him as breathing. After procession, dark patches of sweat would emerge under the neck cuff and armpits of his ankle-length white robe, and sometimes along the rope sash accenting his happily protuberant belly. We'd started wearing wool red blazers to mass around the same time that girls should realize the wonders of deodorant, and about a half-hour into ceremony the middle school section stunk of crawfish carcasses left in the sun.

Father Ralph gave the same sermons every year. The most memorable was his shaving cream demonstration. He'd start with a can and an empty food platter, and begin dispensing the cream onto the surface until there wasn't any more. Then he'd shake the can up and deposit twice as much onto the plate; shake it again, dispense until the foam tower keeled over; and so on and so forth, illustrating the idea that no matter how tired or defeated you feel, you'll always have more to give of yourself. Sometimes he'd cite stories from the Bible, but he usually served up a dose of chicken soup for the soul laced with a personal anecdote or two.

Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Salvador Dali, 1951

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_of_St._John_of_the_Cross

In addition to storytelling, church introduced me to song, and was my gateway drug to musical addiction. All those God-love songs are catchy, and Mrs. Davis, Music Director, made it cool to join the chorus. From chorus, I joined the musicals, followed by piano and classical voice. Every kid was required to perform in the Lessons and Carols Christmas Program, which became my parents' annual date night. They'd drop us off at church around five o'clock, and pick us up four or so hours later.

Through music and stories, church became one of my favorite parts of going to school. Then one day changed everything.

"Who took communion today?" the religion teacher asked my seventh grade class.

Everyone raised his and her hands.

"Would someone tell me why you could take communion today?" he said.

The whole class raised our hands again, and he called on me at the front corner desk.

"'Cause we're all supposed to take it," I said. "It represents the body and blood of Jesus Christ."

"No," he said. "It's because you were baptized."

My unfiltered twelve-year-old mouth blurted out that I'd never been baptized, and no one ever told me I couldn't take it. He told me I'd go to Hell if I took communion again without having been baptized. And I should pray for forgiveness for having taken it so far.

Kids began whispering around me. Have you been baptized? I didn't know you could go to HELL for that! Dribbles of sweat boiled under my skin. Then I wondered if it was me who smelled like a lobster, so I excused myself to the bathroom without asking to blot my face with a damp cloth and make sure there were no stains on the pits of my middy blouse.

I’d never confirmed or refuted the teacher's ideas with God's doctrine, probably because I was so madly absorbed with him telling me that I had done wrong. Because I wasn't baptized, I lacked the religious identity that everyone else seemed to have, and the whole class now knew that and the possibility that I might go to hell if I didn't do something about it.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper

Salvador Dali, 1955

http://www.allartclassic.com/pictures_zoom.php?p_number=32&p=&number=DAS036

The way I recall things, most seventh graders don't think about death and what happens afterwards because they're too busily concerned with problems like what lunch table they'll sit at that day or if their training bras are showing. Since my family is pretty consistently wacky, we'll probably all end up in the same place. That's the important part. But no matter how I framed things in my mind back then, it was a lonely feeling, being told I might go to Hell and believing it. In a place where I once felt socially rooted and creatively inspired, I was now shunned.

Intersections and head-on collisions with religious influencers occur at many points in a person's life. We'll all follow different paths of revelation and devastation and sin and redemption and spiritual fulfillment. Tons of people will tell Kenz that her ideas are wrong, and more scarily, what's "right." I just hope she will be equipped with the agency, resources and attitudes at every such point in her life to decide for herself what to believe, to be sympathetic to all theological stances, to discuss global religious issues intelligently, and to not buy into any religious establishment that serves stale crackers.

Quarantined

When McKenzie was five, she designed this sign.

"Donot go in hir"

I've adapted a version to prevent people from entering my room while on sick-quarantine, and thought you guys might find the sign useful, too. Punch-holes indicate where you'd insert pipe cleaners to conveniently hang the note on any standard door knob.

Worse Than Chickenpox

I'm home sick today, and it's worse than chicken pox.

Why is it worse than chickenpox?

Because I feel groggy and can't even sit around connecting the dots on my arms and legs because there aren't any. Can't cheat and still lose board games with my sisters because they're not here. Can't miss school because it's a Saturday.

And as much as I love to blog, I'd rather be doing a billion other things while feeling a zillion times better than dozing in and out, propping my eyes open with The Man Book and popping Alka Seltzer tabs like candy.

Morgan and McKenzie aren't picking up their phones and I'm at home feeling sorry for myself because I'm sick worse than chicken pox.

Pantomime this

McKenzie told Dad that if you hold up your right index finger at someone, it means something really bad. Dad doesn't know what it means, so she asked me to explain it. I told her that if Dad doesn't know, I definitely don't know, because everything I know I learned from Dad.

"Go pick your nose, you Booger!"

She told me to "stop joking" -- that I must know -- but really I have no idea what it means. We discussed a few ways of testing to find out the gesture's meaning, like trying it out on a few authoritative-looking people and recording their responses. After considering who might be an authoritative figure in this case, though, we decided it'd be best to air on the side of caution. And so on behalf of McKenzie, I am reaching out to ye intellectual blog readers.

Can anyone please help us decipher this cryptic hand signal?

Comfort in Consistency

Yesterday my friend Haley made fun of me for drafting e-mails.

"Doesn't everyone do that?" I said.
"I don't draft e-mails," she said. "No one does. Not like that."

Currently there are 991 drafts in my mailbox. Most of them are earlier drafts of letters that have already gone out, but I guess it's a nauseating number for anyone who writes on impulse & clickity-clacks send, who isn't phased by a minefield of technical errors, and who is less concerned with expressing their ideas most effectively than just getting them out there.

Perhaps it's the affliction of a writer-to-be*, but there's nothing I brood over more than a letter to a friend. In a rational world, how much you care about someone and how long it takes you to write them should be inversely related, but neither writing nor I is rational. In other words, if I haven't written you back yet, it probably means I like you a lot.

In addition to my letter-ary ineptitudes, I tend to be late with all holiday dispatch. This Halloween I told myself I'd rise above and send McKenzie's sisterly box of surprises early enough for it to arrive before the holiday. Six days would be ample time for a Priority Mail parcel to reach South Florida from Atlanta, so I'd penned in the deadline accordingly. The package included a short coloring book I'd made and a ton of chocolate because there's never any of that stuff in the White House. When we had sweets, like my grandparents' annual shipment of tin foil-wrapped Cadbury ghouls, they'd never last longer than a few days.

A week had passed, Halloween had come and gone, and the package still hadn't arrived. Go figure, I thought. When I'd finally gotten a box in the mail on time, it'd gotten lost. I was a failure as a sister.

Then one Thursday afternoon, while toiling over a stack of headlines long enough that my brain was more baked than the Jersey Shore, the phone rang. It was McKenzie.

"Hey dude!" I said.

"Hi, Courtney. Today there was an entire tube of Hershey's, and Dad and Mom finished them off!"

*writer-to-be: term coined by Skyler Dobin, Copywriter

Bacon Soap

Mom used to threaten to wash our mouths out with soap if we didn't say nice things. Her technique would have been much less effective if she'd used Bacon Soap.

The Place Called Halloween

Halloween had always been a favorite holiday growing up. My big sister Morgan and I would start building our costumes weeks in advance, often in collaborative duos like pizza and coke, Angelical Cats complete with full fur headpieces and even a homemade cell phone/beeper combo.

In the days leading up to the event, I’d proudly neglect the remnants of glitter and spray paint lodged in the crevasses of my fingernails. Just like Dad’s grease-covered hands after putting together bicycles in the garage, and my grandpa’s rubbery plastacine stink after a day in the studio, my markings reminded me that I was creating something.

I’d pass time in spelling class sketching my character’s imaginary script along the margins of my composition book, and fantasizing what theatrics could make Morgan’s and my costumes stand out. All the strange obsessiveness paid off; we'd have a great time and always win the costume contest at City Hall.

While McKenzie’s Halloween occurs in the same house and neighborhood, hers is a completely different holiday. She doesn’t have a partner with whom to raid Dad’s prized collection of electronics boxes to build a cardboard body suit. If she does steal a box, she can’t blame the absent sibling when Dad asks where his box went. She doesn’t have a sister in the top bunk with whom to stay up late brainstorming costume ideas from November to October, or a resident friend to trade candies with at the end of the night.

McKenzie in her Halloween costume "from the computer"

This morning there were no last-minute costume adjustments; Dad took Kenz fishing instead. Today she reported that she’s "going to Halloween at five," (Halloween is a destination rather than an event), and she will wear the costume she and Dad got "from the computer." At Halloween, she’ll find Joseph, who’ll be dressed as a gremlin “but not a scary one because [McKenzie isn’t] afraid,” and Parker and Kylie, who hadn’t picked out their costumes as of the time Kenzie last spoke with them.

The fab four will run around the same cold tile-floored auditorium space we’d looked forward to visiting each year. They’ll put candy worms in their punch and brave the haunted house maze as many times as possible before their parents tire, then on the way home they’ll collect silver dollars from the big house at the end of Codrington Drive.

The next day Mom will add a Baby Ruth from Kenzie's pillowcase of loot to her lunch bag, on which Dad will have carefully scribbled a cartoon reflecting the last night's events.

Don't want to talk about it.

"Hey Peanut!"
"...Hi, Courtney," McKenzie said.
Clearly I'd caught Kenz in the middle of something more important.
"Enjoying your four-day weekend?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"OK. Did you and Dad make palas* today?"
"No. He's on a diet. And I don't want to talk about it."
"OK."
"How's it at Boston? I mean, Atlanta."
"It's great," I said. "Lots of homework, but my roommate and I have been helping each other get through it piece by piece. We live in a complex with four other people from school, and the six of us make "the six pack." Two boys, Matty and Ben, are cool and sometimes come over, too. You'd like them a lot. How's Sam?"

[For those of you who don't know Sam, he's a boy from school. For those of you who do know Sam, he's a boy from school. It's nonconditional. The debatable part is whether there's a good friendship or a budding romance between McKenzie and Sam. When some people ask, "how's Sam?" it's clearly a sensitive subject because of the romantic implications. She knows I mean "her friend" Sam, so we've always been able to talk about it. So far.]

"Don't even mention, Courtney. I don't want to talk about it."


Today McKenzie didn't want to talk about anything. I asked Mom if something was wrong, and Mom said it was just one of her new favorite phrases. "You were secretive like that, too, when you were her age," she said.

What makes some young people so secretive? Is it one of the preprogrammed pieces of personality that we're born with or without? And is sharing everything really healthier than not sharing much at all?

I hadn't thought about it before, but there were quirky aspects of my life I'd kept very private growing up. I'd collect lizards and stamps and other weird things and put them in boxes behind the stereo in the cabinet no one ever used. With art projects, I'd find an empty room with a door to close and work behind it for hours. When I was old enough to bike to the next street over, it was one of my favorite pastimes to pick up and go, singing along the way -- in secret. Maybe my tendencies toward introversion steered me to work solo. I didn't tell my family these activities were secret, it was just part of who I was.

Perhaps working in secret is a kid's way of finding out what she can do on her own. All those hours sculpting and beading and weaving macrame defined me for a while. It wasn't as though Kenz didn't want to talk at all (if she's anything like me, this blog will really dry up in ten years when every answer is a one word, "yeah" or "nah," and the occasional eloquent "mumble-mumble-andisaid, like, duh"); she just didn't want to talk about major developments on her end. Perhaps Kenzie and I are wired similarly, and "I don't want to talk about it," is less a secret, and a more way of saying she's growing up.


* Palas, short for Palačinky, are a Czech traditional food that my grandfather and Dad are in charge of making the morning of a special occasion family gathering. Sometimes Sunday qualifies as a special event at White House South. You start with a crepe-like foundation -- except far superior because it's Czech and made by my grandfather or Dad -- then, according to The Clare and Jan White House Cookbook, "Spread apricot jam liberally, roll up, and cover with real sour cream. There is no point being skimpy about any of this for the sake of diet. You either pig out on palačinky or don't even start."

83 degrees and sunny

I told Kenzie about the blog, and offered to send her the link.
"Oh, no thanks," she said. "I don't want to see it."
"Why not?"
"Me and Isis have stuff to do."

This blog entry is short because I've got stuff to do, too. Happy Friday everyone.

Today I called Kenzie and had a ten minute conversation with the cat.

This afternoon Kenz was dressing up her wooden angel dogs ("angels because they don't have buttons"), so I asked her why she wasn't dressing up Isis, the cat, too.
"She's sleeping."
"Oh, that makes sense," I said. "When she wakes up can you say 'hi' to her for me?"
"Would you like to talk to her now?"
"No, let her sleep. Tell me what you're up to?"
I heard rustling sounds over the receiver as Kenzie adjusted the phone up to the cat's furry face. Click. I was on speaker phone now.
"She's trying to get away from it, but speak, Isis, speak," Kenzie said.
There was a long beat of silence on the other line. Uh oh, I thought. What is she doing to the cat?
"Kenzie? I can call Isis back later. Are you there?"
"Meee-eee-eee-ew."
Isis is the kind of cat who's in every room but you'll never know unless she's hungry or really pissed off. In this case, she was not hungry.
"Mew to you too, Isis," I said. "Kenzie, how'd you get her to talk?"
"I don't know."
"What did she say?"
"Hello, hello, hello. And thank you for petting me."

Isis is not an angel cat, but she sure is a saint. And McKenzie knows how to push her buttons.

Copy that (a very serious post)

As soon as I got home last Friday, my phone rang. It was Kenzie calling to see how the first day of school went.
"Not bad," I said. "Each student had to stand up in a big lecture room, introduce themselves, then say where they came from and why they were there. It was scary. Have you ever had to stand up in front of the class?"
"No," she said, "but today we had to sit in a circle and have a talk about peeing on the toilet seats."
I laughed. Not because the subject of peeing on toilet seats isn't a very serious matter, but because it was the honest and unexpected. And completely relatable in degrees of scariness, especially if you're the culprit of toilet seat urination.
"Why are you laughing?"
"I'm sorry. It is a very serious problem. I agree."
"Yeah. It's not funny, Courtney. It's not funny."

After our very serious conversation, I popped open a bottle of wine Dad had left in the fridge from move-in, turned on some mellow Shakira tunes and reflected on the seriousness of the first day of school. I'd been mentally preparing myself for this day for weeks, but I still got knots in my stomach before standing up to say my name. It's because I care so much about this, I'm afraid of screwing up. Fear is creativity's greatest enemy.

Kenz fears nothing. She's hard-wired to hold herself and her friends to high standards, but that does not limit the risks she'll take. She has internalized that there's more at stake in not trying something and missing out on a great experience than in trying something and maybe not succeeding in some form or another. As a marketing communications rookie, I need to adopt her neophytic wisdom. I'm here to take risks and to make kick-ass ads. I am Courtney White, and I am a copywriter.


EDIT: Somewhere between peeing on toilet seats and an affirmation to self, this post digressed into a Plath-ian Confessional. I'd down a bottle of Ambien and retreat under the house for this, but my apartment's concrete foundation stands in the way. Oh well.
Loyal readers, please bear with me while I learn how to blog!

Long-Distance Sistering

The prospect of starting a blog is a little overwhelming and a lot self-indulgent, but as my Dad always rightly said, I've never found a mirror I didn't like. Hopefully this blog will serve as more than a reflection of my exceedingly good looks and will provide some perspective and entertainment as I forge my way through advertising boot camp with a little help, encouragement and inspiration from my six-year-old sister, McKenzie. We live 700 miles apart, or one speed dial, postage stamp, or click of "send" away.


little sis (Kenzie) and middle sis (Courtney)


Here's the story of how we first met.

One fateful night in my junior year of high school, Mom and Dad sat my big sister Morgan and me down for a family dinner. A beautiful spread of cheese and fig compote, succulent grapes and a toasted ciabatta lay before us.

I knew something was up when Dad opened a special bottle of wine and didn't say much about it. Just when I noticed that there were only three glasses on the table, Mom announced that she was pregnant, and she was going to have a baby.
A Baby? I thought. How was that possible?
My older sister Morgan's response was complete unfounded excitement.
"A baby!" Morgan said. "That's awesome!"
Morgan was leaving in a year. She would hardly see the terrible twos.
Mom and Dad shifted their stare at me next, as though waiting for a reaction. But I was stunned.
"Why aren't you saying anything?" Mom said.
"Don't you guys know anything about birth control?" I said.
I regretted those words instantly. But as a rebellious hormonal teenager, I had fallen into a habit of not thinking about what I'd said until after I'd said it, or, more often, not thinking at all.


Nine months and several pounds of chocolate, pizza, and white death carbohydrates later (the white family nearly doubled in size before the baby was born), Mom went into labor. Morgan and I got the message at school. We immediately raced to the parking garage and heavy pedaled it to the hospital. When we got there, Mom was having contractions but not dilating. I heard the doctor explain to a nurse that half an hour of that was dangerous, for my Mom and for the baby. Twenty-nine and a half minutes later, the doctor announced that she would have to have an emergency C-section. A few nurses escorted Mom to a back room, and Dad signed some papers.


(Morgan, Dad and Courtney preparing to meet the little nugget.)


Hospital policy was that the patient could bring one guest into the emergency room, but Dad's policy was All for One, and One for All. Dad handed us some hospital scrubs while the medical staff prepared for the procedure. Then a nurse accompanied us into the operating room. Mom lay on the cot with a large blue sheet dangling from the ceiling separating her head from the rest of her body. Her face was what Miracle Max would diagnose as "mostly dead." I started to cry.

I watched as the doctor made his incision. The skin flared open the way a chicken breast does when you cut the trimmings. There was a short lag time before blood started pouring out, Mom's body resisting the doctor's unorthodox birthing scalpel. I looked up to maintain consciousness, where instead I found a ceiling-mounted mirror reflecting the doctor's view of the entire bloody dissection.

The doctor carefully removed organs from my mother's body -- red ones, brown ones, lumpy ones, round ones -- and placed them on a metal table on wheels beside her. Which one was my sister? I looked to my father, who held Mom's hand as the surgery continued. A drop ran down his cheek, a combination of consternation and perspiration accumulating along the rim of his face mask. I don't think he'd expected the doctor to take my mom apart, either, but he wasn't about to leave Mom's side to tell the doctor what to do. Morgan was behind me. I could feel that she was just as afraid as I was about what would happen next.


(Crying Baby White.)


Morgan was crying, I was crying, and then - suddenly -- a baby was crying, too. She had a great voice. I wondered, were we all feeling the same surge of emotion simultaneously? The same all-consuming familial bond? Morgan went to see the baby, who seemed pretty siked for her first bath, and I remained fixated on the rest of Mom's procedure. Mom has never lost any fight, but when she was completely knocked out and knocked up and knocked out with her body parts on a rolling metal nightstand, I feared for her life.
What if she doesn't wake up, I thought. My mom could die.

The doctor reassembled her parts, and before stitching her up, he lifted the last glittery ornament -- Mom's uterus -- off the side table and waved it in the air.
"Morgan, Courtney; look!" he said. "You were here once!"
Not the time or the place, Doc. Don' mess with my Mom!

[imagine family portrait here; mom would kill me if one actually surfaced on the internets]

Mom woke up eventually, and we got to have a heart-to-heart with the baby to-be-named McKenzie. She was way cooler than I'd thought she would be, and didn't even complain when I put my fingers behind her unusually large ears so she looked like a bunny.


(I'm so not a natural at this, but getting the hang of things.)


When McKenzie was two, I left for college, and we've been in a sororietal LDR ever since. Sistering one state apart isn't easy, but I do the best I can. And she does the same for me.