Sam Matteson

“Who can find a virtuous woman?  for her price is far above rubies.”
Proverbs 31:10

         A sister is often, for a brother, a dubious blessing at the start.  At the beginning he cannot easily see what value is her half of humanity. Sisters are truly different, bona fide members of that subspecies of homo sapiens that is uniquely female and, thus, alien to him.   My sister was no different, nor was I.

Cindy Lou, of course

         Cynthia Lou Matteson, known, of course, as “Cindy Lou” was always part of my world, just as were my mother and father.  From my first memories she is there with them, but as somewhat of a competitor for their attention rather than as a collaborator.  And nearly two years my junior, she seemed much more vulnerable and helpless than any of my peers as we grew up, so that—unfortunately—I slipped into that common brotherly state of mind that discounted her as one not having much to contribute to my interests.  I was wrong.  I did not understand her for a long time, or any other woman, for that matter.  If I had paid closer attention to the lessons she could have taught me then, I would have been so much better prepared to become a husband, a father and grandfather of the girls and women of my life.  But brothers begin thickheaded and slow, more inclined to rough housing than to listening, more attuned to footraces, marbles and tree climbing than insights into feeling.

Nobody in my family enjoyed washing the dishes after our family meals.  As the dessert was finished, my sister and I would glumly look at each other.   The first to speak was sentenced to a lonely half hour over the sink.  At first it was just the two of us, Cindy and I, who sat in jeopardy, but later, when “Baby Dale” was older, there was a trio of potential bottle washers.  So loathsome seemed the task that I, sometimes, would give Cindy a provoking look or whisper, “It’s your turn.”  Somehow I often could get my sister to speak out loud.  “Sammy talked first!” Or “Mother, make Sammy stop tormenting me.”

Cackling syblings

“You children stop ‘nyah-nyahing’” Mother would plead. “The first chicken that cackles laid the egg,” she would intone and Cindy was often chosen.  The pronouncement would be met with “That’s not fair!”  And it probably wasn’t fair.  But more often than I, Cindy was sentenced to sink duty, although it did not seem to me to be too frequent at the time.  For things in the kitchen were “women’s work” when I was a child.  Such tasks were resented by my masculine prejudices.  When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was heard to reply, “A man would do nicely.”  Indeed, I was very glad I was not a woman.

It seemed to me that girls were held captive by their bodies.  A guy was okay if he showed the least bit of athleticism, or he could compensate with knowledge of sports or automobiles or even science.  No boy thought it a compliment to hear that he was such a pretty baby.  A heavy male could be a lineman on the football team.  A freckled-faced carrot top, known naturally as “Red,” could still be a cheerful pal.  But a girl was judged fit or worthless by her looks and that was the end of it.  If she were overweight or plain or shy in the critical eyes of her peers and of those she admired, then she was doomed.  What is more, her emotions were the slave of hormones that raged through monthly cycles with frightening changes, both publically visible in acne or bloating or more intimately and more distressing.  I had only a dim understanding of human physiology in general and that was primarily focused on the masculine gender in particular, despite a provocative but remote interest in the female anatomy admiringly inspired at a distance by women other than those of my clan.  I did not really know nor appreciate what women endured.  I was only glad that I was or would some day be a man.

When I did ultimately become an adult, I began to understand what passed between my sister and me.  I once was asked to give advice to a newly wedded colleague.  He had lived as a bachelor for a long time and had never had any sisters.  He recounted how his bride was angry with him for hurting her feelings.  “I told her, honestly, that I did not mean to hurt her feelings…She was still mad as a hornet.  What can I do?  She is just not being rational about it.”

I thought back to my own experience.  I should have begun to understand this very situation, years before, on that day when I was playing with an old sock.

My sock-full of angry

In my part of Alabama, we had to make our own fun.  I had found an orphaned athletic sock, the kind that eventually everyone finds in the wash, its mate absconded to parts unknown and the forlorn lone sock destined to live out its miserable existence abandoned in a drawer.  I had rescued the lonely hosiery and put it to better use.  I sat on the grass beside the sandy cul-de-sac of Broadmoor Place filling the sock with gray sand and pounding the ground with this surprisingly hard dirt hammer.

I heard my name called.  I twisted to look over my shoulder to see Cindy.  She frowned at me and called out again, “Sammy Gene, Mother says you need to come in to wash up for supper…and by-the-way it’s your turn to do the dishes tonight,” she added a little too sullenly, I thought.  Then she turned to reenter to the house.

In disgusted resignation I carelessly flung the sand-filled sock one more time into the air.  “Ah, forget it all!” my action said.  I jumped up and turned to go in.  To my surprise and horror, the sock that I had released had become a ballistic missile that was arcing in a high and graceful parabola toward my retreating sister’s back.  I calculated the place where it would land and extrapolated Cindy’s position.  I had thrown the projectile with a precision that was far beyond my skill.  I wished I could reel in the airborne bludgeon with invisible threads of regret, but it was now beyond control.

The sand-loaded sapper struck Cindy between the shoulder blades and sent her sprawling under the oak tree.  I heard her scream in pain and anger.  She lay there for a short while with the breath knocked out of her.  I started for her.  Then I stopped.  Breathlessly at first, she pushed up to her knees, then, deliberately, ominously she climbed to her feet.  She turned to me with eyes of fire and came running at me, her fingers spread with claw-like nails to scratch my eyes out.

She would not listen to my protests of innocence and apology.  She clearly wanted blood.  Fortunately, I was bigger and stronger and caught her by the wrists before I was blinded in her wrath.  I held on tight and struggled with her.  She cried and yelled in pain, fury and frustration.  At last, her anger finally began to abate as I continued to apologize.  Eventually she relented in her attack, but I think she was still not convinced of my truthfulness despite my continual protestations of innocence and of regret.

Many times since that day I have let loose reckless words that flew in what seemed like a high ballistic arc out of my control; I always wished that I could suck them back into my mouth or freeze them in place so that they fell to the earth and shattered, anything, as long as they would not hit their unintended mark.  But alas, words, like sand-filled socks have a mind of their own when we have flung them out.  And every time I let fly reckless missiles I relive the sickening scene of remorse.

Not all lessons are lost on brothers

Fortunately, such lessons are not always lost, even on brothers.  Sibling-inflicted pain is not necessarily simply perverse or suffered in vain.  I had learned a lesson that was valuable, a lesson taught to me at my sister’s expense.  I told my friend to imagine that he were working on his house, happily and distractedly driving nails into the siding with a large hammer.  “Imagine,” I continued, “your wife softly comes up behind you unnoticed.” In my parable he strikes his dear one in the head, hard but unintentionally.    She is gravely hurt.  “Of course,” I said, “you say, ‘I’m sorry that you are hurt.  I didn’t mean to hurt you.’  But she continues to cry and perhaps is unreasonably angry in her pain.  Then will you say to me: ‘Now isn’t that just like a woman! So irrational!  I said I’m sorry but she still is upset.  Women, who can understand them?’”   He got the message.

I wish I had got the message sooner, too.  I guess that I should have paid more attention when I was just a brother; then I would have been wiser, sooner and a better husband from the start.  Too bad I was asleep during most of my adolescence, dreaming my own dreams.

I did try to make it up to my sister afterward, but I now realize that even the kindness I showed her was still selfish at its base.  I would, from time to time, surprise her with a little toy I made for her, like the inch-long knife, spoon and fork that I hammered from a wire for her to use when her dolls had tea.  I would carve pine twigs into dolls for her dolls.  She always seemed to appreciate whatever I gave her.  I secretly appreciated her, although I did not really show her.  When you are self-absorbed and uncertain, you are more than a little bit frightened that who you are becoming is not who you want to be, and you have little time or interest in any other person, except when they make you feel capable, admired or at least more worthy.  Sisters rarely make you feel more capable or worthy when you are an adolescent.  Their opinion can’t be trusted, you see; sibling rivalry and jealousies make them untrustworthy.  And besides, they have their own problems.  They also are much like you, since you are from the same gene pool and household.   And you may not care much for such a faithful mirror.

So you’re a Matteson?

So I left Cindy to fend for herself most of her high school years.  I think that she did not have an easy time following two years behind me in school.  Sisters rarely do.  Whether a brother does well or not, expectations and biases among teachers cannot be avoided.  “So you’re a Matteson, huh?” a teacher might remarks ominously and vaguely.

But the magic of maturation and experience happens even when we are not looking.  While I was away from home, first at college and then on my own, my ugly duckling of a sister metamorphosed into a swan.  Somehow the awkward girl became a capable woman when my back was turned and my attention diverted.  Some may wonder if it were she or I that changed—or both.  In any case, now I look on my sister’s accomplishments with pride, and marvel at her affection for the not-always-kind brother of her youth.  I must not be such an awful human being if a person of her caliber finds me worthy of friendship.  Or perhaps it is just that she is a person capable of saintly forgiveness.  Nevertheless, I listen to her with new interest and wonder. I have learned at least one thing: I now know that brothers have much to learn that sisters were specifically designed to teach, both at their beginning and later on.