A River Runs Through It

Kathy Stevenson1 Comment

I write a lot about being a sister, and I am always looking at sibling relationships in both real life and in literature. One of the most memorable portrayals of a sibling relationship is in Norman Maclean’s novella A River Runs Through It. (It is also in my top ten of best movies ever made.) I learn something new about both writing and being a sibling every time I re-read this classic book. One of the great “lessons” of the book is the despair of never being able to “save” a beloved brother, but also, finally, acceptance that this was so.

One passage from the book that I particularly love: “Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as ‘our brothers’ keepers,’ possessed of one of the oldest and possibly one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting of instincts. It will not let us go.”

My brother’s keeper is one of the most familiar phrases in our civilized society. But what about my sister’s keeper? Is there a rule book for this stuff, or are we all just winging it? Maybe my family of six sisters is just standard-issue dysfunctional, and we are all walking around trying to figure out our lives, and putting on a good face. As the oldest of the six sisters, I have always felt the fierce obligation of sisterhood, or “the haunting instinct” that will also, like Maclean, not let me go…

Pass That Tuna Casserole, Please

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(Unearthed from my archives – this essay was published in the Chicago Tribune on 11/29/94.)

Every now and then a journalist comes up with an idea for a newspaper column that makes other journalists straighten up, push back their rusty, squeaky chairs from their blank computers and say, “Now why didn’t I come up with that?”

That’s not the way I felt when I read about a new syndicated column to be penned by news personality Cokie Roberts and her husband Steve, a senior staff writer for U. S. News and World Report.

Their idea is to write a column together that will give readers an idea what it would be like to eavesdrop on a typical conversation at the Roberts’ dinner table. Topics might include the balanced budget amendment, health care, behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealings of Congress and presumably other timely national and world events. You know, stuff you talk about at dinner all the time.

I had the idea for a similar column years ago, but after recording several conversations at our dinner table, I decided the world would be a better place if those conversations remained private. Continue reading →

Three short-shorts

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(A few summers ago I wrote one short-short story a day for a month for newsworks.org, the online news source for WHYY in Philadelphia. Here are four of them…)

1.
Sunday afternoons are the worst, when all those imagined families draw closer in their orbits on solid maple chairs over roast beef served on the good china. On your bulletin board; a faded yellow boutonniere from a dance. I remember the girl, heartbreaking in her youthful beauty. Do you?
2.
A brief kiss by two lovers on the street, given hurriedly. Even the moonlight doesn’t make them linger. Times like this I feel loss the most, when I see others so careless with love. When I see the moon tonight, knowing tomorrow it will be less.
3.
How will I live knowing that darks will be washed with whites, and eggs will sit past their expiration date because no one is making cookies. It’s these things I think of, not loss of love. Maybe I could write it all down for him before I leave.

4.“And there was my husband, standing under the very tree called the widow-maker when the thirty-pound pod dropped squarely on his head, killing him instantly.” The story was tragic, however, in Mavis’s re-telling became slightly tinged with a wry humor.

 

 

Garage Sale Treasures

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(This was originally one of my weekly columns in The Beach Reporter newspaper in Manhattan Beach, CA.)

Having a garage sale every five years or so should be a requirement for every family. Not only do you get rid of things hanging precariously in the rafters of your garage and threatening lives, but you also get to know the true feelings of other family members. It’s better than therapy.

Take the following conversation (which may or may not have happened, I’ll never tell).

Wife: “I really think we should sell your surfboard. The last time you surfed the Beach Boys still had hair, and you didn’t get winded carrying the ice chest down to the beach.”

Husband: “I’m not selling my surfboard! Why, just the other day I was sitting in my office thinking maybe I’d take it up again.”

Wife: “That’s called fantasizing. What do you think we could get for it?” Continue reading →