Today is my sister Eleanor’s birthday. We have birthdays a week apart. She said once that it would have been better if we had our birthdays a few months apart. I’m not sure what her reasoning is.

We were both conceived in January. It is weird, thinking of your parents having sex. But there they were, in the dead of winter with nothing else to do but do what people who are married do in the dead of winter. I envisioned them first playing Scrabble, then calling it a day.

I was conceived in Stuttgart, Germany. El was conceived in Rochester, NY. My parents were living on Terry Town Drive, a newly formed residential subdivision. Both places are cold, and get dark early, so the couple most likely went to bed early.

I don’t have vivid memories of my sister as a little baby. I do remember that she was fed formula – my father didn’t want my mother to breastfeed their offspring. I remember the glass bottles, cleaned and steamed, sitting on the counter. I remember hanging out under the changing table – it was like a tent.

I remember El and I being in the same room, she must then have been two – I was five – she was born with club feet and had these braces on her feet that spread her feet apart. I recall that one day, El was put down for a nap with these braces on her feet – I watched as she grabbed the bars of the crib and did a front flip over the top rail. She was momentarily too surprised to cry – then she let loose with a wail that brought my mother running into the room. I said, “I didn’t do it,” which was a common refrain of mine during her early years.

“I didn’t do it.” And oh yes, there was the swimming incident. I had just learned how to swim underwater and thought that El should know too. So I took her over to a neighbor’s above grown pool and told her that if she got in, that she’d be able to swim. She got in. She was wearing diapers. She went head down into the water and did not surface. I yelled. My father vaulted over two chain link fences and pulled El out of the water. I told him that I was teaching her to swim. I don’t remember what the punishment was, but it most likely involved getting a spanking, and being sent to my room.

El was a very happy child, and so her nickname was Jolly Norf. She got along very well with my cousin Chris, and the two, when they were six, agreed that someday, they’d get married. I did not get along with my cousin Mark who was my age. The one thing we agreed upon was that we’d never get married.

It’s really odd to have such vivid memories of childhood pop into my head. And even odder still, to not have any memories of yesterday.

Next: 261. 9/25/24: Recidivists