Sisterhood on the Day After the Election

It is remarkable how memory rises to the surface, creating moments of joy. Oddly enough, I joined my writer friends at a book launch held the day after the election. Thirty-some folks, mostly women, sat in the audience, enthralled as the author read her engaging family stories. The setting was on the covered patio of a charming gift shop. One table was set with the author’s books. Another with a lavish array of food and drinks. Off to one side, a Mexican artista was busy working on her pottery. The store owner graciously greeted visitors to the book launch until all were finally seated.

The writer read her family stories, including the close relationship with her two older sisters. She recounted a moving scene of sisterhood during their older years as she read the following:

We sit on my sister’s couch, bent over her childhood photo albums. Our older sister now lost to Alzheimer’s; we are the two remaining cognizant members of the family of our youth. As we pore over old pictures – those cryptic signals from the past, we begin to remember more, recalling scraps of ourselves that give a meaning to the name of scrapbook, drawing us together over simple common images…

I take her hand, grateful for her survival. Just the two of us, now, everyone else sealed up in this peeling album. We put them to sleep again as we close its cover.

As she read, I began thinking of my two sisters. I tried recovering a memory that had been buried, but the bitter part of our relationship blocked it. I knew it involved a song our mother taught us to sing and sometimes perform for friends and relatives.

At the end of the reading, I raised my hand and asked the author if she was familiar with a song about sisters. “Yes,” she quickly replied. Just then, a singer-songwriter friend in the crowd started singing – “Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.” Two other women joined in with another verse – “Caring, sharing, every little thing we are wearing.”

There was a pause. The author looked as if she was trolling the depths of her memory. I could feel the women pushing memory to the uppermost level of recall. The brief but loaded silence broke when we heard yet another verse from a woman who practically leaped out of her chair while singing – “When a certain gentleman arrived from Rome, she wore the dress, and I stayed home.”

Laughter spilled over the audience like a gleeful waterfall. The few men present wore puzzled looks but were grinning, nonetheless. It was possibly one of the happiest moments of my recent life. The solidarity I enjoyed with my sisters in song was compelling. I felt wonderstruck.

The fact that many of us had arrived at the book launch on the day of the election with bashed hopes and heavy hearts were paradoxically heightened and transformed into a joyful, even exhilarating event.

Our anxiety over Kamala Harris’s crushing loss was replaced by the jubilation of a buried memory rising to the surface like a phoenix soaring up from the ashes of election day despair. The recovery of women’s memory won the vote.

“Sisters,” written in 1954 by Irving Berlin for the film White Christmas and performed by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, made Election Day, Tuesday, November 6, 2024, memorable in a most positive and healing way. This timeless classic endured popularity across generations, symbolizing and empowering women’s unconditional support for one another. Kamala Harris was present in spirit and camaraderie at this book launch. We felt it in the bosom of our being.

Now that’s magic!

By the way, the reading took place at Diane Pearl’s well-known gallery in Riberas del Pilar. The singer-songwriter who led us in the song was Becky McGuigan. The author was and is poet and writer Judy Dykstra-Brown, who read from her “memorable” memoir, The China Bulldog and Other Tales from a Small-Town Girl.