The Goddess

One thing that has always bound us is our shared love of music. It was kind of cool to see the directions your musical taste took through the phases of years and formed the uh, indescribable person you are now. As you know, I love to sing despite how it may sound to people unlucky enough to be around to hear it. The best thing we ever owned in our meager house growing up was the book of Tori Amos sheet music, and the piano, of course. You played and I sang through every song in there, I believe. And if we didn't, then we must make that a priority. Exploring the musical genius of our favorite artist, cresting through the parts we could master, and stumbling and laughing over ones too difficult to ever reproduce the way Tori made it sound - those memories make me feel alive and excited every time they surface.

Remember the days of pogs?

There was this one time that we had a spat, and you locked yourself in your room and wouldn't let me in. I got really angry and started pounding/pulling ferociously on the door, probably almost breaking it, but you wouldn't open it. There was some of your artwork on the door, don't know if you remember it, but it was some collage you made out of construction paper that had the character of our last name on it. So I took a red pen and wrote on it something to the effect of: "Maggie Lee is a stupid, awful person." When you found that I had scribbled on your artwork, you got really mad and confronted me. I was probably playing with pogs at the time, and I had this bright orange slammer with a hologram sticker of a skull on it. It was bad-ass. You took a red permanent maker and drew all over it, and when I saw it, I tried to wash it off...but of course it wouldn't come off. So I went whining and crying to Dad (dude, I just realized how many stupid tantrums I threw as a kid), and he disappeared with the slammer for like a minute. When he came back, he went, "Ta-da" and it was good as new (and smelled like rubbing alcohol). Unfortunately, he couldn't magic my bad handwriting away from your collage. That's one of the few fights we ever had that I remember.

The Bub

I remember the day Dad and I took you to the eye hospital when you were probably four. Your preschool clued us in that something might be wrong with your eyes. We went into the examination room with the doctor. I had been wearing glasses for astigmatism and going to the eye doctor was always a nervous experience for me. He sat you on a machine with a raised seat and had you read the letters on the opposite wall. I can't remember which eye he did first, but it was a quick exam. You basically stopped after the big E. I remember thinking, "O my god, my sister is blind. How could we not have known?" Your other eye was better in comparison, but not great either. That was the beginning of your days with those chunky blue-framed glasses glued onto your face - Bub as everyone knew her.

Rollerblades, bikes, and hysteria

So one of the more poignant things I do remember from our bicycle-riding days: I was probably 10 or 11, and we went out riding around the neighborhood with our bikes, but also brought along our rollerblades so that we could skate around in the playground. When we got to the playground, we put on the blades and had our fun with them. By the time we got bored and wanted to leave, we conceived of the ingenious and daring idea of biking WITH our rollerblades on. I was very enthusiastic about the idea and whined about it, while you, the sensible older sibling, decided against it, probably foreseeing worse accidents than we've already had while just rollerblading. We barely had the coordination necessary to move around on any kind of wheels.

So anyway, being the brat that I was, I got mad at the fact that I couldn't mortally endanger myself by biking and blading at the same time, and rushed home in a huff, leaving you a block behind. I got home, and you still didn't arrive after 10 minutes, so I went looking for you outside. You were nowhere to be found. After another 10 minutes, I started panicking and searching the streets, and when I still couldn't find you, I went back home and had the horrible idea that some kidnapper had swiped you off the streets while I was huffing home. So then I started to cry, and I mean real, agonized, big gulps of breath, bordering-on-hysteria crying, with fist pounding and all. I seriously thought you had been kidnapped and would go missing like one of those children whose faces you see on the back of milk cartons. I called mom at work and told her you were missing between fits of crying, but while I was on the phone, you magically appeared at the back door with a bag from the video store. Then I stopped crying and said, "Um, nevermind...I guess she just went to the store." And that was yet another episode where the sudden disappearance/ delayed reappearance of Maggie Lee during her teenage years has caused mortal fear to strike in the hearts of her nearest and dearest.

lasting impressions

So you know how at any given age, you have the same impressions of your older relatives (cousins, sisters) even as you grow older, and even as they are obviously growing older and wiser. To put it a more articulate way, you see the same given elements of their personalities from the eyes of your barely cognizant 5-year-old self to those of your wiser 21-year-old self. For example, Terry and Linda, at whatever age, were always (and still are) the wry-humored cousins who laugh at my dorky tendencies, who were always the calm observers of my fits of temper, and who were always much more practical people in general. And to a certain extent, you've also always shared similar pragmatism, sarcastic humor, and a collectedness that I assume must come from mom's side of the family.

Anyway, so one of the few things I do remember from life at 3 or 4 years old: we were in the apartment, and mom was cooking, you were entertaining yourself with something, and I was playing with legos on the floor. I was running a fever and was whining (as per usual) about not feeling well, slumped rather lifelessly over my legos. I was complaining repeatedly in my poor Cantonese, "It hurts, it hurts." And at some point, you got fed up with the whining and asked, "What hurts?" And I said, in pouting fashion, "All of my body hurts." And you, with a smug sarcastic look on your face, passed on the information half-laughingly to mom: "She says 'all of her body' hurts." I recognized at this early age your sarcastic, no-nonsense tendencies even in the dire plight of body-racking fever, and whether you were 11 years old or 28.

The Wielder of Worldly Knowledge

Ok, so my first post is going to be something I think I've asked you about before - don't know whether you remember this at all.

When you were about 5 or a little bit younger, I learned of the stubbornness of your character, and I realized I had to do something if I were to continue to completely dominate and reap the benefits of being the elder. The benefits I desired to keep were, among other things, that you would do whatever I told you to. It wasn't hard to maintain that position, since being 7 years older had obvious advantages, such as the ability to wield the knowledge of worldly things to my advantage.

I can't remember exactly how it started, but you were being stubborn like always - I'm sure of it. So, after attempts at reasoning with you failed, I cleverly figured out the thing that would make you change your mind. I said, "If you don't (let's say it was) clean my room, I'm going to call in the monsters." And I ambled over to the open window and began to call, "Hey, monsters-" I was stopped by a frantic wailing, "Noooo! Ok, I'll do it!"

And so it went for sometime that I got what I wanted from you, because I knew how afraid you were of the dark and what lurked within it. I had you believing that I had some insider connection with that scary place. I'm not sure how long my reign as The Wielder lasted, but it ended one day when your reply to my threat was, "Go ahead."