My sister and I finally had the idea for the title of our co-written autobiography (yet to happen): Bernhardt and Bankhead.
Like most siblings, my sister and I have had a complicated relationship. We went through a lot growing up together, being the only ones there for one another, competing in all sorts of areas, separating, and finally hating each other for about six years. In the past two years my older sister has one from someone I could barely be around for the short family breaks we had to one of my best friends who I call whenever I have a problem.
Our newest idea is that we’re going to write a biography of our lives together when we’re older. Whenever I call her up with a new problem or a new amazing idea we just say it’s another chapter in the story. Planning to write a story of your life is a really good way to frame any problems you have. It just becomes an interesting story, another chapter, the basis for a new song. The fact that I can now go through that with someone else is incredibly rewarding.
We’ve named a few of the chapters based on some of our conversations over the past year. But recently, we decided what the title would be. When we were growing up, our mother created nicknames for us. There were the usual embarrassing cute ones, the shortened versions of our names, the references to animals and various languages my mother didn’t actually speak. (Recently I found out that a friend of mine was also called boobahlah as she was growing up. I’m not sure if my friend’s mother also conjugated it to boobahli or boobahlini like mine did, but the mere fact that the word existed for another person was surprising enough).
I’ve heard that a lot of parents use full names when they’re angry. “Miranda Aisling Hynes!” If you heard your middle name you really knew that you were in trouble. I don’t remember my parents ever using my middle name, although that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Instead, my mother created our stage names. My sister was Sarah Bernhardt and I was Tallulah Bankhead. To this day if I’m being particularly dramatic my mother will still call me Tallulah. For years all I knew about Tallulah was that she made dramatic exits, which I was also prone to doing as a child. Slamming doors, in particular, was and still is a favorite pastime of my angry self.
During a long phone conversation earlier this week, my sister and I revisited our childhood nicknames and I realized just how good they sound together. I have this thing about alliteration, I love it. That may be why. Either way, not only did we decide to name our future autobiography Bernhardt and Bankhead (look out for it in stores in about twenty years), we also decided that the sister band we’ve wanted to start since we were kids watching the Nields could also live under that name. This is one of the ridiculous, wonderful ideas that just makes me happy every time I think about it. Don’t be surprised if in the future I draw a poster and put it up on here. It’s going to happen.
P.S. Yes, that is a picture of me with green paint all over my head. My sister, standing in the back with her paint covered hands, got a blob of green paint on my white blond hair and in the mere seconds my parents were gone from the room decided that my head was a much better canvas than her actual canvas. My head, and the bathtub, were dyed green for a week.