sisters
The living room carpet of our house growing up was a thick, lush gold. The honey-stained paneling was extra knotty. The hearth had been hand-laid by my grandpa and the “surround sound” installed by Dad. We had sliding glass doors that looked out onto a field that was sometimes filled with sheep. Other times it was filled with the wildness of living on acres of land in Georgia: deer, raccoons, snakes...I watched the trees sway in the wind.
Sister ran from the sewing room / record room to the living room just as the clarinets and lower strings set off those first four notes. We stared each other down until the first beats of Walter Murphy’s disco drum kicked in. Grabbing hands, we danced around the living room in a circle, jumping and kicking and throwing our hands in the air all the while laughing uncontrollably as the funky, jazzy synthesizer rolled around us and over us. We danced until we were sweaty and our vision blurry and then fell in a heap on the floor, legs and arms tangled. My orange koolaid mustache highlighted my dimpled smile as I looked at you.
