Free About My Sisters by Debra Ginsberg Page B

father answers. “We hide from each other all the time.” He turns back to my mother. “Time to go,” he says.
    â€œRight,” my mother says. “Thank you, girls. It was lovely.”
    After they leave, Déja says, “You know, I think the two of them are getting a bit weird.” Maya and I just laugh.
    â€œSeriously,” Déja says. “Do you think Mommy and Daddy are going to get old? Is that really going to happen?”
    Déja seems wistful about this. She’s not yet twenty-five and still wants to believe that everything goes on forever. She still hasthat sense of immortal youth. I can’t figure out if I miss that feeling or not. In some ways, it’s comforting to know that, at almost forty, my life is into its second half. And, of course, the older I get, the closer in age I am to my own parents and therefore, the closer our experiences, the more similar our life weariness. But Déja hasn’t approached that place yet, nor should she. Nor has Lavander, really. But Lavander has the unique distinction among my sisters and me of being born when my parents fell into the average category. What I mean by this is that my parents were very young when they had Maya and me—barely out of their teens, in fact. Lavander and Bo (who are eighteen months apart) arrived when my parents were into their twenties, the time when most people their age were just starting their families. They were in their thirties when Déja was born at the end of 1977, an age then considered a little late to still be adding children to the family. As a result, Lavander’s peers have parents the same age as she does. Maya’s and my peers have parents who are much older, Déja’s have parents who are younger.
    Lavander is not philosophical about my parents aging, but she’s damn funny. The issue of what one does when one’s parents die came up recently when we were discussing the case of a Las Vegas woman who wanted to bury her mother in her backyard so that she could always be close to her. There were some municipal issues involved with the burial and that’s why the case made it into the papers. Lavander stated emphatically that she would never consider burying our parents in the backyard, but she wanted always to be as close to my parents as she is now. When they die, she said, she planned to stuff them and seat them on her couch, “so they will always be with me.” It says something about our family that all of us, especially my parents, found this tremendously amusing and that the only comment offered was that she was going to have to find a really good taxidermist.
    â€œDebra, really, what do you think?” Déja repeats. “Do you think they’re going to get old?”
    â€œWhat do you mean by old?” I ask her. “They’re already a lot older than they were when we knew them.”
    Now Déja’s really confused. “What do you mean?” she says. Maya is laughing. My comment was for her anyway.
    â€œI know exactly what she means,” Maya says. “We knew them a long time ago. When it was just the four of us. Before all of you lot.”
    â€œOh sure,” Déja says.
    â€œShe’s right,” I tell Déja. “You missed quite a bit.”
    And it’s true, our parents never had a nest egg, a set of silver, or a dinner service for six. With all their moves, they never even accumulated furniture. For many years, we sat on giant foam-filled pillows that my mother had created with reusable Indian-print bedspreads or swaths of wide-wale corduroy. We had tapestries and plenty of hanging beads to separate areas of space. There was a time when our living rooms looked like the inside of Barbara Eden’s bottle in I Dream of Jeannie. Throughout my childhood, I was sure that only the elderly owned couches. Headboards were a foreign concept altogether and forget about curio cabinets. Those are still a