long time no write…work and sister

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            Crazy long time since I’ve written. There is a reason. I think I’m just getting back my equilibrium. The political season, plus my most favorite uncle dying and my daughter having to have a cesarean to birth her first baby all happening from late August until late November probably has something to do with it.

            Somewhere in-between all that I got sick…how could I avoid it but I still had to keep going. It was the first time that I really felt worn out in such a deep way that it almost was scary. For two days I simply couldn’t move.

            Bouncing back enable me to visit my new grandson, work some more and I was going every month to see my Uncle as he slowly suffered through something akin to pancreatic cancer. My sister and I would meet and spend time with our uncle in NYC, and as he rested we’d run around the city spending money on clothes and other goodies. It was the first time I allowed time to be with her.

            My sister is two years older and when we were kids not only was she my father’s favorite but she hated me for taking attention away. Placing blame on me, physical and emotional abuse, stealing friends, were all a part of her tactics. It didn’t take me long to stay away for good. When she had kids I visited only to make sure the cousins new each other and that I got to know them but I avoided her for 20 or more years. When I got breast cancer 16 years ago, she all of sudden showed concern. I didn’t trust it but I also couldn’t tell her sincerity and questioned why she was being kind to me. Was it false affection, would she turn around two seconds later and tell me I’ve ruined her life by coming up with the disease? Would she call up my best friend and tell her that I wasn’t the person she thinks I am and convince her to hate me? (she did that several times). She had power, charm, extrovert, wickedly smart and was/is a musician. People loved her when we were teenagers. Me – introvert, quiet, loner.

            However, with age, the ability to deceive and manipulate became harder for her. Friends and even her own family could see through it. Looking at her I began to see a pitiful character with very few friends, marriages that made no sense, even careers that were created to please our father and not her own interests and yet she could pontificate for hours on her lofty vocation to boost her crumbled self-esteem.  Our father was an M.D. so after getting a masters in botany she later became a midwife with a second degree in nursing and then a masters in midwifery. She could write prescriptions making it in her mind, as close to an M.D. as one could get. To this day we’re not sure why she didn’t just go to medical school.

            Three years ago our dear older brother died of cancer. When I was tiny I clearly saw him as the ally and my sister as the enemy. It was so obvious right from the beginning. When he died the dynamics changed for my sister. She was truly alone now, Our brother kept her at bay and was able to talk to her. I remember one time he actually had to tell her to thank our parents for paying for her second degree (not her style). Her five children were angry at her for constantly putting their father down. She then married a weird heavily bearded religious zealot and when that didn’t work out she went for a professor with two growing kids that clearly wanted my sister there to help him care for his young  boys, not necessarily out of any deep love for her. Her main reason for marrying the third husband was because the sex was so exciting…that was it.

            Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe all that sex, the loss of our brother, now the loss of our favorite and most influential uncle, me

llowed my sister. We started talking less and listening more. Most of the time I couldn’t stand the long lectures but my mother must have said something to her because they got shorter almost to being tolerable. Since then only every once in a while will she go off on a whole discourse.  Now I see someone that can listen and laugh more at herself and her failings. It’s kind of nice, strange too, to all of a sudden have a sister that intimately knows all about my past but that I’m getting to know from scratch. She’s acting like a real sister and a friend. It’s hard to believe.