By the Rev. Heather Blackstone
Special to the Tribune
My oldest sister is the one who makes my parents shake their heads and ask, “Where did she come from?” While my middle sister and I spent the ’80s begging for Calvin Klein and Benetton, Jen settled into what we call her uniform: a white Haines T-shirt, frayed jeans or cutoffs and combat boots that always look as though they just emerged from a war.
Since she is an artist, the ink and paint stains that punctuate all her clothing make sense. The holes — those are a mystery. Whenever Jen has an event, an interview or date, my mother can’t help but ask her what she is planning to wear, praying in vain to hear words like “pencil skirt” or “heels.” When friends make comments or we offer to help her shop, Jen’s response is always “What do you caayah?” using the deepest, thickest Maine accent she can drag up, splashing us with our own superficiality.
Her lack of discernment is far from limited to clothing, as my sister is also notorious for eating and drinking anything, edibility is assumed. As kids, our mum would hand her a questionable jug of milk to see if it had expired. Jen would take a deep swig and between chews say, “Yeah, it’s turned.” My mother would have to rush to grab the jug out of her hand before a second sip was taken. This ability to eat and stomach anything made Jen quite popular in grade school, as she would gladly eat whatever concoctions her classmates made out of lunch scraps. Her claim to fame was that she could eat anything if was drenched in A1 Sauce, another item my mother would have to yank out of her hands before she could drink.
Last Christmas, my sister was invited to a Christmas party, a Yankee swap where you could only bring something you didn’t want anymore. She brought her dog, who had been sprayed by a skunk the day before. Guests with shiny red manicures in festive plaids clinked glasses of champagne as my sister entered in her uniform, skunked dog in tow. The string quartet held its breath and struggled through its Victorian carol repertoire as co-workers sniffed the air and said, “Jen must be here.” The dog tore around the room, threatening the tree until the host announced it was time to start the Yankee swap. As gifts were unwrapped it became clear that most were brought to impress, and thus began a competition of who had the best supposed garbage.
One woman who did follow the rules brought an ancient bottle of Jean Naté that she found on her grandmother’s dresser. It had been there for decades; the black bulb cap was stuck to the bottle with an oily dust. Almost everyone there had memories of their mothers and grandmothers splashing themselves after a shower or bath. The swap was abandoned as the bottle was passed around, everyone wanting to remember the scent. Memories were shared of watching mums get ready for a night out or being indulged by a babysitting aunt after a bath.
As guests were getting nostalgic and a bit teary, the bottle came to my sister, who promptly drank the Jean Naté. Later, when retelling the story my sister said, “I’ve drank a lot of stuff in my life but that Jean Naté, I tasted that for weeks.” She said that a few days after the party, she yawned while in line at the grocery store. The man in front of her turned his head, sniffing the air with a faraway smile. She felt quite proud that she had interrupted his monotonous line standing with a happy memory.
Despite the amount of head-shaking she causes, my sister is a reminder that sometimes we need that person who crashes into situations and disrupts everything. Sometimes we need someone to show us that despite our best intentions, it is easy to begin focusing on things that really don’t matter and we find ourselves drowning in superficiality. Sometimes we need someone who causes us to reset, to re-examine our motives, who is so entertainingly out of the norm that they allow us to observe and laugh at our own absurdity.
Blackstone is director of youth ministries at St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church.
