LORI'S TUMBLR LIVES ON

“I was sort of chasing this elusive tone,” he says, “and finally one day I gave up. I spent a couple of hours at rehearsal, I marked the settings on my amp. I got it as good as I could.” In the end, he decided, “This is the tone I have, so what are the songs that I’m gonna make with this?”

And though my mother could be “difficult” at times, in my mind, she had committed no crimes worthy of the punishment my sister began to inflict upon her.

I can’t remember how many times I played the mender of fences. I would suggest family outings or holiday meals to dissolve the grudges, and whenever my sister decided she was ready she would relent. She’d show up on a birthday or Christmas as if nothing had happened. No one dared bring up any of the grievances, we walked on eggshells, and we didn’t want her to have another reason to shut herself off from us.

The hurt feelings and misunderstandings between my mom and sister continued, and with each occurrence, my sister took longer and longer to come back around. What once took a few weeks to resolve turned into months of restricted contact from her. My mom’s attempts at calling her would either go unanswered or with very brief conversations that would end with my sister saying she would call her back later…but never would. This is how the cycle would play out: My mom would call my sister, get put off, lied to, or a victim of call-screening. My mom would wait days and weeks for the callback, then lose her cool and leave a voicemail expressing her ire at my sister’s choice to not call back. These angry voicemails gave my sister the excuse she needed to separate herself more and more.

She could read the fear in their faces, but they were perfectly submissive to her authority. “I can only explain it by trauma, because that is such an unusual behavior,” she said. Sevier had brought along Mickey Mouse toys to break the ice, and the kids seem to enjoy playing with them. Yet none resisted, she said, when she took them away at the end of the exam. “At some point,” Sevier mused, “you’re broken and you stop fighting.”