Frank: To My Sister, on Her Birthday

Today is my sister Meryl’s 80th birthday. I could wrack my brains for the perfect gift idea, but when you get to be as old as Meryl is, and you’ve been as talented and lucky as she has been, you don’t need more stuff. So I’m going to give her 800 handcrafted words instead – 100 for each decade.

Meryl’s an older sister, which means I’ve known her all my life. But we’re eight years apart, which means that by the time of my earliest memories of her, she was already in her teens. And teenagers occupy a different universe than little kids. I’m playing “Challenge the Yankees” in the basement; she’s primping for dates. 

So I don’t remember her playing with me, the way Wendy did, or even babysitting for me, though she must have. I do remember being proud to be the brother of a Spartanette, high-kicking at halftime during football games. 

I also remember this: I’m sitting on the living room sofa. The room can be accessed via two doorways from the kitchen and dining room. I hear my sisters begin to wordlessly sing the theme music to “Peter Gunn,” a detective show from the early ‘60s.

Doot-doot/ doot-doot/ doot-doot/ DOOT-doot

Doot-doot/ doot-doot/ doot-doot/ DOOT-doot

The tune, composed by Henry Mancini, is ominous sounding. I know what’s coming. I could bolt up the stairs, but I’m paralyzed by an odd amalgam of dread and delight. 

Wendy comes from one doorway, Meryl from the other. They’re holding their hands out in front of them, like they’re carrying bowls of matzoball soup, but their hands are empty and their fingers are wiggling. The music gets more insistent. I’m laughing and squirming already.

The wiggling fingers are tickling fingers. They attack. It’s unbearable. And hilarious.

And then I’m 10 and Meryl goes off to college, never to live at home again. To her, I’m frozen in amber: her little brother. I don’t think she noticed I had grown up until I was about 30.

That eight-year difference might as well have been a generation. Meryl graduated from high school in 1964. I graduated in 1972. In Meryl’s high school yearbook photo, she has a bouffant. In my high school yearbook photo, if I’d bothered to show up on picture day, I’d have had a giant Afro. 

She was pre-hippie, I was post-. (Wendy, Class of ’68, came of age in the prime hippie years.) 

Meryl’s music was the Four Seasons, the Bobbys (Darin and Rydell), Elvis, the Drifters. Mine was The Doors, Led Zep, Traffic, Cream.

For so many college-bound girls of that time, the career pickings were slim: teacher, nurse, secretary. And those were stopgaps before one embarked on one’s real career: wife and mother. 

Meryl went the teacher route. One bit of her teaching experience has stayed with me. She trained to teach Spanish. The New York City school system also needed her to teach Italian. How do you teach a language you don’t know? When the kids are on Chapter 1, you’re on Chapter 2. This pro tip has made me a more confident teacher. 

When a husband didn’t magically appear, Meryl got more career-focused. From teaching she went to counseling and from counseling kids to counseling employees as a corporate human resources person. That path took her from New York to Denver to Gillette, Wyoming(!), to Houston to Dallas. 

Along the way, she became a dispenser of sage advice. In 1985, having finished a draft of my dissertation, I wandered into the newsroom of a small paper in California and got a job as a reporter. 

I loved it. The dissertation languished. I thought, I have found my life’s work. What do I need a Ph.D. for?

Meryl, a natural life coach, saw it differently. She thought I might be glad I had that degree someday. 

She was right. The news biz nosedived. My talented reporter friends got laid off and scrambled to find jobs they wouldn’t hate. I was still in newspaperland, but after much foot-dragging I finished the diss and when I saw an opportunity to make use of my fancy degree, I grabbed it. I’m now in year 29 of my teaching career at Penn State (still on Chapter 2 when my students are on Chapter 1).

In Meryl’s life, meanwhile, a husband did magically appear. And our lives converged. My daughter Sylvie was born in April 1987. Meryl’s son Alex was born in May 1987. We’ve been close ever since, not only because of parallel parenting, but because we find the same things funny and, despite the age gap, enjoy, with Wendy, swapping memories of Mom, Dad, Grandma and ourselves when we were kids.

Have there been heartaches? Of course. Lots. But this is one tough cookie. The toughest, by far, of the three of us.

Happy Birfday, Merf! And as Grandma would say, in her Yiddish accent, many happy more!

Love, 

Your Baby Brother