Sisterhood of the Traveling Van
I couldn't be a mother without my sisters.
It was 1994, the summer before seventh grade. Every morning, my sister Mariam and I loaded into our father’s black Honda Odyssey, named ‘Blackberry’ after the character from Watership Down, and drove to school. Mariam was, and still is, 12 years older than me, and like most sisters with much younger siblings, took on more than her fair share of responsibilities. At 23, she was the “dean” of a free summer school program designed to inspire inner-city youth like myself to love learning. We took classes on law and ethics and Greek mythology, which were taught by kids even younger than my sister, but who seemed aged and wise to us. Nantucket Nectars was a perennial sponsor of inner-city youth, so we started each morning with a bottle of Kiwi Berry juice or Half & Half (apparently “Arnold Palmer” was copyrighted). Salt-N-Pepa’s “Very Necessary” had been released the previous fall, and every single morning, early enough that the city was barely stirring, Mariam blasted her cassette single of “None of Your Business” on the car stereo, pumping the brakes at red lights to make me giggle and dancing in the joyous, unembarrassed way in which she still dances, whenever she gets the chance.
The song is a feminist-anthem-of-sorts, a protest rap against slut-shaming culture, a call to suspend judgement of each other’s sexuality (while confusingly continuing to layer on judgements). I don’t remember Mariam explaining the lyrics to me, or trying to lay out the patriarchal systems that already had their talons in my 12-year-old flesh, the ways that, as women, we needed to show up for another instead of cutting each other down like the powers-that-be encouraged us to do. But she didn’t need to explain sisterhood to me. By that time I already understood.
When Mariam’s first child, Jasmine, was born, I was in college. As an auntie, I learned how to be a mother with few expectations, a delightful position I often yearn to be in with my own children. Mariam trusted me with her kids, and I believe I was worthy of that trust, despite my having not a shred of an idea of how to take care of myself. And she taught me how to be a mother - because even though I’d been mothered exceptionally well by my own mother, we never have enough distance, at least until much much later, to see our own childhood with a clear view.
Mariam is at the other end of all of my greatest joys and crises. She was at the birth of both of my children, as was my sister Bekah, who literally caught my daughter (Bekah would want me to assure you here that she is a trained nurse-midwife) with her bare hands (and here she would want me to tell you that she was trying to get her gloves on but there just wasn’t time). Bekah, just two years older than me, and so somewhat subject to that hazy lens through which we see our mothers, was always more of a controversial figure. But even in the times where we fought all day and ran in different circles and tussled over a boy, every night she left her door open for me, and most nights I slipped in and enjoyed a sweet amnesty and at least one or twice, I recall, even as a teenager, fell asleep holding her hand.
And there are the sisters who are not really sisters but could not possibly be referred to as anything else. My brother’s college girlfriend Kate, who told me in no uncertain terms that I was a poet, and who, 20 years later, after she’d married my brother and given him two daughters and taught me, in another beautiful but different way from Mariam, how to mother, warned me that my own motherhood would be endlessly rewarding, but never fully compensated. My childhood friend Sam, who used to wake up at five in the morning with me for our shift at a local bakery, where we gave away food like it was going out of style, who called me out on the diets I adopted as thinly-veiled self-harm, who doesn’t like to get all touchy-feely but who tells me she loves me every chance she gets. My “grad-school-wife” Kelly who lives in Denver now but doesn’t give an ish when I call her or what for, and always picks up with the same “hello, friend.”
Much has been said about sisterhood. We do it for ourselves, possess divine secrets, and at times send each other traveling pants. But today, when our partners or co-parents give us flowers and we thank the women who birthed us or raised us, who can never be thanked enough, I cannot stop thinking about my sisters and how not enough has been said in their honor. It certainly does take a village to raise a child. But it also takes one to raise a mother. And to sustain her. And to pick her up off the bathroom floor. And to leave a chocolate croissant on her doorstep on a particularly shitty day. And to remind her of the woman she was before motherhood. And the woman she wants to be after. Something exciting, I believe, is happening in the culture of motherhood at this moment. We have decided we do not want to be superheroes. And we do not want to be villains. We just want to be women who happen to have children, and who have the support they need to do it sanely and with dignity.
This past year, a mother of a year, my sisters have made this new narrative possible for me. Mariam, and Bekah, and Kate, and Sam. And Courtney and Allison and Christine, the “sister-wives” who by some grade-of-goddess happen to be my neighbors. They mothered my children this year, without a doubt, painting rocks and resolving disputes and making lunch plates that somehow my children always wanted more than my own. But they mothered me too, or sistered, me, or whatever you want to call this blessed combination of holding and pushing, witnessing and waving-through, trusting and taking-to-task, that women offer to one another.
This morning, the sister-wives and I took our regular early morning hike in our crazy, resplendent canyon that sits just blocks away from an urban thoroughfare, as grounding and disorienting as having a child. Courtney surprised us on the way down with coffee and donuts. She knows what she likes. We danced near her open car trunk to our “song of the summer,” which actually came out in 2017, which is fitting for a bunch of moms.
Unless the “no-baby-rod” implanted in my arm (don’t worry, it’s just Nexplanon) malfunctions, my daughter will not have any biological sisters. But if she chooses to be a mother, and even if she doesn’t, she will find them. I will leave it up to the sisterhood to come looking for her, and she will get what she can’t get from me, or what I am done giving, from them. And my sisters will join me for other adventures; empty nests and menopause, and if we are lucky, a rediscovering of ourselves after these early years of motherhood. And I’ll show up for them and forgive them and challenge them but ultimately just let them be who they are. Because really, it’s none of my business.
Look at all the incredible things my sisters do! Shine girls, shine.
Mariam’s best-selling children’s books and teacher-trainings for kids’ yoga.
Bekah’s game-changing pre-natal and maternal care company.
Kate’s fabulous new audio play.
Kelly’s telling-it-like-it-is call for policy changes that support gender equity.
Courtney’s illuminating new podcast.
Sam’s delicious restaurant, where she gets to show off her top-notch hospitality (and the t-shirts are SUPER comfy).