When I started this blog, Christine responded immediately to my first entry with something like, “While other 5-year-olds were singing along to Raffi, I was listening to Morrissey.” This is true, and while now I might complain that my entire youth was spent babysitting Christine, the truth is that I enjoyed every second of using her as a receptacle for all the music I listened to back then.
Just come to my house sometime and I’ll show you. There is evidence on video of Christine as a toddler modeling swimsuits and large leather jackets, while Depeche Mode’s “Dangerous” played in the background. I have her lip syncing and acting rather lasciviously, especially for a 4 year old, to “Little 15”. There’s also the one of Christine’s eating popcorn at some crazy midnight hour to “Black Celebration”. It is definitely a black moment when you realize as an adult, from old videos, that you didn’t do such a good job of feeding your sister or putting her to bed on time.
I guess Christine learned at a very early age about synthesizers and depression. She just didn’t know it at the time. To her, at the tender age of 5, “The boy with the thorn in his side” was a brilliant dance song, one in which I forced her to shake her hips back and forth while staring upwards to the ceiling and encouraged her to maintain the forlorn expression in her eyes. To think about that on a small child is painful now. If only she would have agreed for me to put the bouquet of dead wild flowers in her back pocket.
“A question of lust”, obviously an inappropriate song for a toddler, was used by Christine to model our father’s wifebeaters. She was adept and amazing at turning one into a jacket from a dress, while wearing it.
“Sometimes” was interpreted by Christine as appropriate background music for an instructional workout video. That particular video includes an entire segment in which we have to watch this Vietnamese baby put on some thick adult leggings. Her tiny hands scrunching those leggings up to her thighs, she stands up at one point and runs in place while Martin sings, “You can’t tell me honestly, you’re happy with what you see, only sometimes…”
Watching those videos now, I have to wonder, was I committing child abuse? I have no idea of the effects that all of this may have had on Christine. Maybe the days that she paints her nails black are when the memories of these things return to her. Maybe her inability to accept hugs from me, her own sister, was brought on by having to answer one too many questions about Morrissey and Martin Gore (see blog entry January 31st): when was Morrissey born, what is Martin’s favorite food, what does Depeche Mode mean by this or that song, etc.
I am sure Christine is reading this now. I am sure she’d like for me also to mention that eventually even our mother took to wearing an almost cut-off Belle & Sebastian shirt as well. The day we saw her in it, I think, was one that reminded us of all the good times we had when Christine was a baby. I just wish I had had my video camera.
