Working on the biography of my sister Vernal has put to light my inexperience and limitations in researching a family member. How do I deal with her secrets and habits? The work constitutes careful examination of my own ways as well as Vernal's. She was out of pace with the throngs of society, and couldn't "fall in" as in the military phrase of orderly marching. This is not a literal reference, but is tangentially applicable: our father brought some of his own military experience to bear in his instructions to us for stoicism, erect posture, correct walking. But for Vernal, his instructions were too severe, demanded too early, and seriously stunted her growth.
I don't know anyone else who kept meticulous records of all the books she had read, or mostly wished to read, categorizing them—children's books, a most favorite lobe of interest; animal stories, books of which she had read reviews and which therefore piqued her interest; philosophical and religious treatises bordering on psychology? I don't know anyone else who scrupulously recorded the publisher, the date of the copyright, the author of the review, without benefit of college assignments for a term paper or thesis? I don't know anyone else who loved to read but said, "I don't have time to read, I have too many things to do."
Her conflicts went beyond books and reading; she responded consciously and unconsciously to the demands and commands of our father for perfection in a "good job well done." I have even thought often of how she walked (out of pace, now literally). On the short distance from home to the store, for instance, she established her odd gait as she started out, but a change in posture and stride had her straightening her shoulders and suddenly walking swiftly. It was disconcerting even to me who knew her very well.
My sister lives on in the strewn scraps and Xeroxed copies of letters she wrote to friends. She lives on in the "rehearsal" notes she wrote for greeting cards: she wrote out detailed pleasantries and then copied them for sending. Again, the introject-father, her interior task master, seized her energies and purposes. I ask myself: How could our father cause such inhibition and restraint in what she once called herself, "...a sweet little girl"?