{"id":126,"date":"2021-02-23T22:14:40","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T22:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/?p=126"},"modified":"2021-03-09T03:35:59","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T03:35:59","slug":"amelia-and-margot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/amelia-and-margot\/","title":{"rendered":"Amelia and Margot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Margot and I (PC: Lori Pressman 2018)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Me and my sister have always been close. Although I may not have always marked her as a close friend as I do now, throughout our lives we have shared a constant protective bond. There has always been a sort of baseline understanding that we are here to care for each other no matter what. I often feel that the love that I have for my sister is the purest in my body, it is expectant of nothing and exists only to make another person feel safe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past two years or so, we have grown even closer. We have moved beyond a sisterly friendship to one that I would have with any of my peers. She is only four years younger than me and as time passes, the age gap has felt smaller and smaller. At the beginning of quarantine, we found ourselves stuck at home, a place that I feel both of us want to spend as little time as possible in. Even though it is the house that both of us have spent years in, it was becoming increasingly unfamiliar and unfriendly just as our parents do the same. This coupled with the fact that both of us had to put our respective freshman years on hold meant that we were overwhelmed with a feeling of frustration and restlessness. There seemed to be no escape from our new environment and there was no salvation in sight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As our parent’s marriage deteriorates, so does the food we eat. Often taking only a few polite bites before retreating to our rooms, my sister and I often found ourselves still hungry as night fell. Eating food you don’t like every day can be depressing as hell. Eating in joyless silence can be just as sad. This is no way to live. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After months of this dragging on, we came upon a solution. Under the cover of night, we would sneak down to the kitchen (now deemed safe as both our parents were asleep), and prepare our nightly feasts: homemade fried chicken, sliced strawberries, big bowls of ramen, anything that we wanted we would make. These nightly meals would often be paired with night walks, watching childhood movies, and always lots of laughter. Food was a way for us to create a reality where things felt lighter, where eating was paired with warmth and levity, where meals were ended with laughing so hard your stomach hurts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back on this time, it is these nightly two person parties that I remember the most, not the tense energy and dead air of the daytime. When mealtimes are off, everything is off. So, we just changed around when our real mealtime would be. I truly feel as though this saved our spirits if nothing else during the summer of quarantine. Whenever I visit we still do the same, sneaking downstairs at night (careful to skip over the squeaky step) and feasting until any bad feeling of the daytime has been completely digested. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*************<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationship between two sisters can be a very powerful one. The shared experiences of both childhood upbringing and girlhood create a bond that is hard to break. As we grow up and into ourselves, this bond has only strengthened. When faced with a difficult situation or time in one’s life, it is these kinds of bonds that carry you through. My sister and I have often discussed how we were sisters in every past life, how we have been with each other through every version of ourselves through the millennia. I can only imagine how, in the difficult and fraught lives of Jews living in Eastern European shtetls, bonds between sisters must have been a much needed safe haven. When I look at pictures of sisters from this era, I imagine them having the same conversations Margot and I have: laughing amongst themselves, gossiping and singing together, their love mirrored in our own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • \"\"
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Miles & Chris Laks Lerman<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
  • \"\"
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Esther Lurie<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
  • \"\"
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Celia Gorlen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    PC: Corey Pressman 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":462,"featured_media":127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/tmtaa-portfolio-w21-amelia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}