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Show 8 followed suspiciously leading questions such as: "How would you like a little brother?" "How would you like a little s i s t e r ? " "How would you like to be married?" I hinted openly for Mama to have twins, but all I got was another sister. I already had three. Once launched, however, I became a totaler. If teetolar means refraining from, totaler must mean the opposite: total commitment. Wave a nurse's cap in front of me and I want to outdo Flornce Nightingale. Dangle a sculptor's tool before my nose and I want to go Michael Angelo one better. The first poetry prize I won (for an epic I wrote when I was twelve) I wanted to dethrone Shakespeare. I wanted to be a better mother than Mama, a better sweetheart than Heloise, a sister, wife, musician than the world had ever known. In short, I wanted to build a better mouse trap in the midst of a forest. I was, mentally anyway, a female Horatio Alger, a protagonist, a do-or-die personality. One life, one person, cannot do all the things I wanted (still want) to do. When you measure the accomplishment against the ambition it is easy to see I was a total flop. As my father's daughter I got off to a bad start. When my father first looked at me he assured himself, I am sure, that I was all right, complete with number of toes and fingers and able to squall, and that Mother had come through all right, then he didn't speak to her for three weeks. He absented himself at outside tasks, tending water, chopping wood, and probably putting up second crop hay, since I was born in August. |
