Sweet Pussy Cat Dreams

(This week's Search Engine Fiction prompt is 'Sweet Dreams' and it led me to writing this non-fiction piece)

I have three sisters; two older and one younger. At the time my parents were getting a divorce there was a lot of chaos and my eldest sister, who must have been about 15, managed to get herself, me (I was 8), my sister who was about 13, my little sister who was 2, and my almost newborn brother from an apartment in downtown Baltimore to the airport, on a plane to Wisconsin, and back to my father. When I think of it, I’m still astounded. I remember her announcing to my mentally ill mother that we were leaving and I remember the violent confrontation that followed.

From that point, my eldest sister for me was just someone who could do things. She was an adult in my eyes. A capable person. Since then depression, isolation, and the messed up psyches of some ill chosen friends have squeezed her into herself, forcing her strong capable self to run and hide, and instead the convenient, though soul-crushing, persona of victim has taken centre stage. I haven’t seen her like this; I only know it from talk, and honestly I’d like to keep it that way if I could. It is sad to see heroes crushed.

My little sister was too young to remember any of this. She knows more of our oldest sister the way she is now. So when she was visiting, I told her my memories of that time. The memories I thought I knew. I wanted her to know that 15 year old girl with such power.

When she returned to the States she related what I said to our other sister, the one just older than me. This sister, too, has taken a break from sanity, but unfortunately in a way that society finds acceptable, so they leave her to it. She told my younger sister that my memories were faulty, that our eldest sister wasn’t so powerful back then.

I suspect she is a bit of a revisionist, but I also know that my fiction mind plays havoc with my past, creating memories that are not quite true. So I don’t know. I suppose the truth is somewhere in the middle, I still hope it is more on my side; I still believe that really.

So that experience sometimes has me questioning one of my few clear memories of my mother. My mother had a sister who she adored who died of leukaemia when she was a child. This event, like so many in my mother’s life, caused irreparable damage to her sensitive mind. She was desperately afraid that one of us would get leukaemia too. What she remembered of the disease was that her sister got big bruises on her arms.

So every night before going to bed, I was required to go to her and pull up my sleeves. She would check my arms thoroughly, any bruises had to be explained or she would very quickly jump to the conclusion that I was soon to be taken. If all clear, she would give me a hug and whisper, “Sweet pussy cat dreams”. It was a nightly ritual, whenever we were with her between her stays in various mental hospitals. Sometimes when she was not around, I would forgo the search for bruises but still whisper sweet pussy cat dreams to myself before falling asleep.

She’s dead now, having died a sad, tragic death after a short life of the same, but I sometimes wonder if she ever had any sweet pussy cat dreams of her own or, being the best mother that she was able to be, she saved them all for me.