A daughter looks at seventy

I’ve been writing this post for almost 25 years. Sure, I’ve been known to procrastinate, but that isn’t the case this time. No, this post has been – just like me – a work in progress. You see, I’m turning 70 at the end of the month (please act surprised) and that’s a daunting milestone for most folks, but for me, 70 has been the Demogorgon shadowing me since my mother died in 2002 – at the age of… yes, 70.

**My movie star mom set the bar high for birthdays. I only wish she had been able to celebrate a few more of her own.**

I was 45 when I lost both of my parents. Correction – they weren’t lost – they were stolen by cancer. My father was 79 – not a bad run – but my mother was only 70. And I’ve carried around a chip – more like a cinderblock some days – on my shoulder about it for a very long time. Even after all these years, it’s still an automatic equation I do in my head when I come across an obituary – how many years longer did that person live than my mother. Grief math is real and it’s even more painful than Algebra 2. It made me resentful for a very long time, but I’m grateful for some good friends whose own losses have helped mollify my perspective over the years. Like my friend Maryanne who was five years old when her mother died at 35 – unfathomable. And Jen who was only 21 when her mother died in a car accident when she was 53. By the way, both of these women grew up to be extraordinary mothers – which seems just right.

Look, I know I’m not special – well, maybe to a few people – lots of folks surpass the age at which a parent died. And for many, just like me, it is a landmark event that makes you scrutinize your own life more intensely. It’s a bit like taking a selfie from a low angle and it’s not always a pretty picture.

I thought that my overwhelming feeling about reaching the age at which my mother died would be relief – I made it. I wasn’t prepared for the existential dread of it all. It began the first of the year with sudden waves of sadness and anxiety. I could feel myself missing my mother more than usual – a physical longing to be in her presence again. And I started revisiting her illness and death in ways I had not done in a long time – vivid images of her beautiful face wincing from the hideous pain that was strangling her. I’ve been so lucky over the years that when I see my mother in my dreams she is never sick. I mean my dreams are not always the gauzy fluff Hallmark movies are made of – sometimes she’s cranky and we argue, but she is beautiful and well.

**Memes are so funny – until they’re not.**

It took me a while to realize that part of my anxiety was the reality of facing my own mortality. In the haunting lyrics of the late great John Prine – I am an old woman. Me! Sweet suffering Jesus, how did that happen? And even with my superpower of denial, I couldn’t hide from my angst because it seems like every other person I know turned 70 this year. I guess that makes sense. I’m on a group text chain with about 10 women I went to high school with – including two I’ve known since elementary school. The group doesn’t overshare and usually just chimes in for birthdays, news of grandchildren, and more so in the past few years – illness and death. Two of the women in the chain have been widowed recently and more than a few have had some serious health issues. One of my closest friends from the group was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago. That one shattered me. She’s no longer able to participate in the group chat, but her husband checks in with us now and again to give us updates – and a whole hell of a lot of perspective on living.

Carol, Lee Anne and me – We were lucky to be seated alphabetically in Mrs. Crabel’s 4th grade class at Spotswood Elementary and became lifelong friends. We celebrated Lee Anne’s 70th in April at a 70s music concert. We may have danced like no one was watching.

So there have been a lot of sweet and funny 70^th birthday wishes and memes being exchanged this year. I think I’m the last to go and I hope I can still find the messages amusing. It’s a diverse group of women – we certainly don’t all align politically and I’m the only gay in the village – but we share a unique history. We have known each other through braces and acne and weddings and funerals. And it is a great comfort to me to still be connected with people who knew my parents.

**This is Tom – one of my very favorite men who also happens to be my attorney. Fun fact- he’s a real life Atticus Finch and we celebrated his 70th a few weeks ago.**

My mother was big on birthdays and everyone in our gang looked forward to my party every year. To be fair, I think their enthusiasm had more to do with my mother’s amazing crème puffs than me, but it was always a fun day. My last birthday with my mother was spent in the hospital at her bedside. She had been put on a course of steroids and was feeling downright perky – not gorked out on morphine as she was for so much of her last months. A friend brought a beautiful box of pastries to her room, and she was able to eat a bit. It wasn’t my best birthday, but I will always be thankful for the gift of her full and pain-free presence that day.

**Mom’s puffs were the life of the party!**

Even my esthetician, Chagit, turned 70 last month. I’ve known her for longer than either of us can remember, and I think of her foremost as a friend – not the person who gives me bitchin eyebrows every month. Fortunately for me, she’s great at both. Like my high school mates we have been through a lot together – like turning 50. We have laughed ourselves silly about how we totally freaked out all those years ago about what we thought was a milestone. If we make it to 80, I’m sure we’ll still be laughing about it. We’ve both gotten older, but oh, so much wiser. Just ask us.

**Chagit is the Rembrandt of eyebrows and the Jewish mother I didn’t know I needed.**

As my birthday draws closer, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life – especially my regrets. I have plenty of them and for the record, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t. A life without regret is one without reflection. I have a long list of minor ones – like not learning to play the piano and those tragic perms I got in the 80s – and a shorter one that often haunts me – the one that includes things I’ve done that hurt people I deeply loved.

Author Ann Patchett beautifully captures my relationship with regrets in her novel Tom Lake when she writes, “We remember the people we hurt so much more clearly than the people who hurt us.” I am grateful that I remember. Regrets are phantom scars that never quite fully fade away. I think that’s a good thing. They remind us of when we needed to be better – and I hope I have been.

And here’s a little inside elder wisdom for you – don’t fret too much about those people who hurt you. In my experience, karma has been stealth but highly efficient. Patience, Grasshopper – and stay on the high road.

All the cool kids turned 70 this year – even Hope from *thirtysomething*. Time for a reboot? *Silver Yuppies?*

Lately, I’ve also been thinking about legacy. My dear friend Sue who has been an “other” mother to me for a long time, turns 84 later this year and she asked me to help write her obituary. Sue is in good health for the most part, but she’s a lifelong educator and has her lesson plans in order in all phases of her life. She’s accomplished quite a lot in that life and it’s hard to condense it into the standard obit template. Working on this task has made me think about what I would want people to remember about me. Sue doesn’t know this, but she has helped me write my own obituary. She sent me a beautiful birthday card a few years ago that still sits on my desk. The front of the card features an image of poet Amanda Gorman above the words Be the Light. Inside the card, Sue wrote some lovely things to me, but one sentence stood me still and I revisit it like a touchstone on days when those regrets get the best of me.

“I doubt that you have seldom met a person or cause that you did not embrace in one form or another.”

That’s it. That’s my obit. And it’s enough, but I do hope you don’t see it anytime soon.

**I’m so lucky to have Sue as a role model for aging gracefully – with fabulous eyewear.**

My mother’s mother lived to be 90. Go figure – no Fitbit and steeping vegetables in bacon fat served my grandmother well. I can’t recall her ever talking about being old, but I do remember being at her house and watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. That was in July of 1969 – a few months before she turned 70. My family were all upstairs asleep – Grandma and I were the only ones who had stayed up late. We sat on the couch together in the dark watching the grainy coverage and when Armstrong took his one giant leap for mankind, my grandmother shook her head and softly said, “I never thought I’d see the day.” I think that’s how I’ve felt about turning 70 for a very long time. I’m not a fatalist at all – I just couldn’t imagine what living longer than my mother would look like. I’ve never been great with maps or directions, and I will soon be entering unchartered territory. I guess I’m lucky I have so many good folks a wee bit ahead of me on the trail. I hope they drop a few Werther’s from their pockets along the way to guide me.

**Grandma saw some things in her 90 years.**

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to celebrate this biggie birthday. The last thing I wanted was a party – too loud, too much. I knew I wanted to be near water – close to nature and far away from the madding crowd. It’s a bit tricky because my birthday falls at the end of summer when it is still beastly hot where I live. And to know me, is to know that if I’m hot, ain’t nobody happy. So, if all goes well, I’ll be on the rugged coast of northern California on a deck that hangs over the Pacific – wearing a hoodie and holding an Olivia Pope sized glass of red wine. I’ll be with my dear wife, my beloved sister and my best friend from college – who, of course, also turned 70 this year. Her brother – her best friend – died last year. He was 72. I can do the math, but I detest it.

The consistently wise Anne Lamott wrote an essay for The Washington Post a few years ago on the occasion of her 70^th birthday and said, “I think I am only 57, but the paperwork does not back this up.” I would say neither do the knees, but here we are. And I’ll take it with abundant gratitude – and maybe if I’m lucky, a crème puff or two.

**My mother loved this quote by novelist Henry Miller and even found it on a fridge magnet. I’ve kept it close for almost 25 years and** **understand it more fully now that I’m of a certain age. I think it sounds like a worthy mission statement for my next decade. Cheers, Mom!**

Miracle at Ace Hardware

I suppose if we’re lucky, we all experience a Christmas miracle or two during our lifetimes. Okay, maybe not Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life caliber miracle, but a little something special that happens around this time of year. I found mine last week at the post office of all places. Yes, the post office and even that Grinch Louis DeJoy couldn’t steal it from me.

The post office I frequent most often is in the back of an Ace Hardware store. It’s conveniently located in a shopping center that includes a grocery store, a CVS, and a Starbucks. Let me digress for a moment. I am the least handy woman on earth. My toolbox is the size of a cigar box. I’m lucky that I have gifted friends who can fix things. That said, I’ve always loved hardware stores. Maybe it’s because it was one of my favorite places to visit with my dad when I was little. He was a super handy guy and took great pride in fixing things. Sidebar: This fixing almost always involved a lot of colorful cussing, which also intrigued me as a child. Anyway, he would often go to the hardware store on Saturday mornings for some part or widget he needed, and I would race to the car to ride shotgun with him. Calm down, Karen – there were no car seat laws back in the olden days. My mother had the reflexes of a panther and could catch a 40 pound kid sliding off the seat with one hand.

**This guy could fix anything with a little cussing and a lot of duct tape.**

I had no idea (still don’t) what most of the things in the store were, but I loved all the organized bins and shelves brimming with so many mysterious parts. I can remember what that store smelled like – woody, musty, manly. Think Hardware Store, a new fragrance for men and Sam Elliot as the celebrity spokesperson. It felt like entering a secret clubhouse because there were never many women, much less little girls there. My dad would talk to a lot of the other men, and they would be nice to me. And the best part was that the store had a little pen with baby chicks under a heat lamp. I loved holding those warm little peeps and feeling their tiny racing hearts in my hands and I’m certain that early bonding partially explains my vegetarianism as an adult.

Okay, so now you see why I think the idea of a post office in a hardware store is cool – convenience and nostalgia. My post office is tiny – two stations at the counter but usually only one person is working. Oh, and they never seem to have books of stamps for purchase. Seriously? It drove me crazy for years and then I just started ordering them online. I care about stamps – probably too much. I’m old school when it comes to correspondence. I still send notes and postcards, so I use quite a few stamps each year and I want them to be a little more creative than the FOREVER flag.

But my tiny post office is great for mailing packages. Parking is a breeze and there’s rarely a line. The clerks are friendly, and you can get in and out quickly. Well, except at Christmas, of course. The good news is that I only had two packages to mail. The bad news is that both were going to California. That’s a pricey passage via Priority Mail. True story – the postage for one of my packages cost more than the contents. Alas, both boxes included homemade cookies and I wanted them to arrive intact and relatively fresh – so speed was of the essence.

**It’s the most wonderful time of the year**!

Strategy is key to mailing holiday packages. I arrived at the store a few minutes after the 8 AM opening on Monday. A very young woman standing behind the register at the front of the store greeted me with a forlorn expression. She squeaked out, “Good morning” in her tiny voice and then took a deep breath. I sensed she was preparing to deliver some grim news. She said, “The post office lady is running late this morning.” I swear she winced when the words left her mouth as if she were expecting me to punch her in the nose. I smiled and said, “Okay.” The look of relief on her face made me sad. I guess she’s been abused like many dealing with the public in these thinly staffed times. I continued to the back of the store and discovered my early bird status placed me at the head of a line going nowhere.

A few minutes later a young man carrying two envelopes walked up. He had heard the disappointing news, too, and shrugged at me like “what are you going to do” – and immediately got on his phone. I couldn’t hear his conversation, but the tone was stressful – too stressful for 8 AM. Soon, another woman with a couple of boxes joined the queue. By now it was 8:20. I considered leaving and coming back later but one of my boxes was pretty big and I was over schlepping it.

My pondering was interrupted by the sound of the harried postal clerk announcing her arrival. “I’m here, I’m here! I’m sorry I’m late. My daughter has four children and had a flat tire this morning and I had to rescue her.” I’ve used punctuation here, but her explanation came out as one breathy, emotional run on sentence. I’m always amused how Southerners can just spill their guts to total strangers on a dime. Her apology was most sincere, and it would have been cruel to say anything but what we all said – “It’s fine.”

The clerk threw off her coat and turned on whatever makes the post office engine run. The stressed-out guy had stepped over to a rack of greeting cards to take another call and was pacing while he talked. He was starting to stress me out. I’ve realized during COVID II that sometimes I can feel the collective stress and angst of my fellow humans – especially in places like the grocery store and parking lots. And, yes, the post office. Even though I was clearly at the head of the line, the clerk bellowed out, “Okay, who’s first?” And then my better angels took over. I know, who knew I had them? I said to the stressed-out guy, “Go ahead. You just have those letters to mail.” He looked at me like I had offered him a kidney. He said, “No, no, I can’t.” I said, “Yes. It’s no problem.” He still seemed incredulous to my offer and asked me if I was sure – like this was a binding legal agreement. I assured him it was fine, and he said thanks and walked to the counter. And, as expected, his business with Chatty Cathy was quickly finished.

I assumed he would probably thank me again as he passed by me on the way out. What I didn’t see coming was that he stopped right in front of me and looked me directly in my eyes (the ones right above my mask line) and softly said, “Thank you. I really needed that today.” For a second, I thought he might actually hug me. And honestly, I think I would have been all in. I smiled back at him and said, “I kind of thought you did. You’re welcome.” No, an angel didn’t get his wings or anything, but in that moment, it felt like a communion of sorts. Two weary humans in a never-ending pandemic making a brief but authentic connection in the little post office in Ace Hardware. It was just what I didn’t know I needed.

**Original art by the fabulous Woodie Anderson. art.woodieanderson.net**

I was on a high when I finally got to unload my packages to the clerk. She put the big box on the scale and groaned, “Oh, no.” I laughed out loud and told her I knew how much it cost to send something cross country. She apologized again for being late and told me earnestly that there was no way she was going to leave her daughter in distress. “I’m the only one she haves,” she said. And then I heard the sound of my own voice saying, “Well, then it sounds as if she has quite a lot.” She smiled at me sweetly and this time I’m pretty sure I heard a bell ring.

**Actual photo of me at the Post Office.**

P.S. Shout out to the USPS! My packages were scheduled to arrive on Thursday and were delivered a day early. Okay, the two cookie containers in the big box were slightly crushed, but nary a cookie was crumbled Ding, ding! Another tiny miracle.

**Pretty packages resting after their cross country journey to Berkeley.**

**I’m here for tiny miracles and tiny trees this year.**

Nice work if you can get it

I’m in California for the summer trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. It’s my grown-up version of summer camp only instead of swimming, lanyard making and s’mores, there’s a lot of existential angst and self-doubt with the occasional avocado toast. Damn, I wish I had appreciated Camp Massanetta more at the time. I guess youth – and summer camp – are wasted on the young.

Why California? Well, if you’re asking, you’ve never been here. If my spirit animal were a state, it would be California. Oh, and back in NC where I live my regular life, the temperatures last weekend were in the upper 90’s with heat indexes well over 100. This morning, when I took my walk, it was 56 degrees here in Pleasanton, with humidity of 28%. I feel like I got a Get out of Hell Free card for the summer. And we just won’t talk about that minor earthquake the other day.

The other bonus about being in California is that my baby sister lives here. We’ve spent most of our adult lives living a time zone or two away from each other – not on purpose mind you. She’s my best friend and having this much time with her really is like Christmas in July.

The west coast is the best coast when I’m with my sister.

She works in healthcare management and has a super big job at Stanford. She also works on average about 60 hours a week and is never really off. I would hate her job, but then again, so does she. Who wouldn’t? She’s devoted her professional life to providing optimal care for people living with cancer, but every day, literally, hour by hour, our healthcare system gets further away from patient care and ever closer to reducing treatment plans to spreadsheets.

I worry about her – she’s got a lot of years left to work – too many years to hate what she’s doing. The truth is a bunch of folks are in that situation and that just sucks, because I think there was a time when a lot of people liked their jobs.

Maybe I watched too much TV growing up and it warped my idea of work. Back then, people, albeit mostly men, loved their jobs, but were we ever sure what they did for a living? Like what did Ward Cleaver, Beaver’s dad, do except come home to a perfectly coiffed June every evening with his briefcase in his hand? Not a bad gig, but still a bit sketchy.

Living the dream, but where was Ward during the day?

For a lot of us, Mary Tyler Moore was the first role model for a single working woman. Mary Richards was an associate producer for a news station in Minneapolis and she seemed to really love her job – except for the part about not being paid as much as her male colleagues and having to be careful not to intimidate them. Gosh, how times have changed. Said no one ever.

My girlfriends and I loved Mary and her cute clothes and groovy little apartment, and we always knew where we would be on Saturday nights. And if we were babysitting, you can bet those brats would be tucked in before that iconic MTM theme song started. Truth be told, I think I probably majored in Communication Arts because of Mary Richards.

Honestly, I blame my dad for giving me an idealized vision of job satisfaction. He was a sales manager for several companies throughout his career and he loved his job. I never once heard him complain about work. Not once. Sure, he might not have liked a boss or some stupid decision someone up the chain made, but he loved being on the road – a lot – and calling on his customers. He never had an office – except for the dingy basement one at home – but he worked in almost complete autonomy – and therein probably lies the secret to his job happiness. I think most folks would enjoy the work they do more if they didn’t have to do it with some of the assholes they work with. And damn if it’s not true about bad apples. I worked with a couple of rotten ones at my last job, but more on that later.

I’m at an age where several of my friends are retiring. Boy, that’s a word that has a whole new meaning to me now. Remember when you were young, and you heard about someone retiring – they had to be old and white haired and ready to sit in a recliner for the rest of their days. Thank God retirement isn’t wasted on the young. My retired friends are so busy they don’t know how they ever had time to work.

Well, I don’t have a recliner (I have a strong aversion to motion furniture) and I’m not retired. No, I was retired. Big difference. It’s a long story that has played out a bazillion times before me. Surely, you’ve heard it – a couple of weak men felt intimated by a strong woman who was their boss and decided to complain to an equally weak man who had a wee bit of power and, well, that never ends well for the strong woman. Or maybe it does.

A forced retirement gives one a lot of time for reflection, especially after the scars of betrayal have faded. Sometimes a sharp sting of disappointment will still surprise me – like a tooth that’s sensitive to ice cream, but time and validation have helped a lot. I’m profoundly grateful for all those folks who confirmed I got a raw deal, even a few – granted, a dishearteningly few – of the sheep who helped kick me to the curb. Validation doesn’t pay for health insurance, but it does improve your posture.

I’ve also had the gift of insight from unlikely sources, and not necessarily the people closest to me. We’re so reluctant to talk about hard things in our society – even with people we really care about. It’s just easier to assume that someone is doing okay after something bad happens. That’s a real shame because that’s when we really need to talk someone.

My friend Beyoncé, (not her real name), has been one of the wisest voices I’ve heard during my sabbatical from the work world. She is an incredibly private person and would be absolutely mortified if I used her real name. Funny – we weren’t really friends until I lost my job. She was a donor where I used to work and while we were certainly friendly, it was a professional relationship.

Coffee with Queen Bey has been a balm for me.

We have coffee every other month and we exchange emails fairly often. I love hearing from her – she’s a clever writer which I always appreciate, and she’s not afraid to talk about hard things. Sometimes I think she knows me – like really where I am these days – better than some of my dearest friends. She’s a bit of a Yoda figure in my life and I am thankful for her presence.

She sent me an email a few months ago that I still can’t get out of my head. She talked about the concept of losing face as it is understood in Chinese culture. It’s much more than being embarrassed. In Eastern society, you spend your life trying to build up your own relationships and reputation, while also trying to avoid causing anyone else to lose these things. You gain face more by being perceived as helpful and promoting others rather than individual achievement. To lose face means that your ability to function as a member of the social order has been diminished.

Beyoncé suggested to me that my struggles after losing a job that I dearly loved were more about losing my place in the world than my position. I had been a very public figure representing an important agency with people often seeking my counsel and opinion on things. Now, that was gone, and I felt invisible at times. She said I needed to find my face again. And she was right. I had attached too much of my identity to a job and when that was snatched away from me, I didn’t know who I was in the world.

“The noble art of losing face may some day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace.” Piet Hein

Think about it. What’s the first question you usually ask someone when you meet them. What makes your heart sing? Probably not, unless you’re Oprah. Nope. What do you do? That’s the question and if you’re lucky, what you do does say a lot about you, but certainly not everything and perhaps not the most important things.

Ram Dass, the American spiritual leader and author, is the subject of a new documentary, Becoming Nobody, which explores the concept of identity. He says that we all want to be a somebody in order to keep our roles and identities safe and tidy. He explains that “we have so many protective shells, so many defensive patterns that only when we drop all of that can we begin to move from ego to soul – and then eventually all of our motives begin to come from a place of compassion.” Whoa, hold on, there! Ram Dass says that the questions we should be asking are, “What can I do for others?” and not “What do I need?”

Ram Dass is purported to be in failing health and that makes me very sad. His wisdom feels like a life raft in this Perfect Shit Storm we’ve been living in the past three years.

I’ve even turned to a few well-known self-help gurus in my search for what’s next for me. I usually avoid those types like Costco samples during flu season, but this life can humble you. I stumbled across a blog by author Mark Manson. He’s well known for his bestseller, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. Catchy title, right? Anyway, the blog I read was “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose” and the question that really got my attention was number three: What makes you forget to eat and poop? Manson isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions. (Where is my eye roll emoji when I need it?)

I answered quickly and clearly – watching the US Women’s National Team play soccer. My answer was truthful, but completely unsustainable as a life purpose since the World Cup only rolls around every four years. My other answer, like Manson’s, was writing. I love words and I love storytelling – not in a “it was a dark and stormy night” sort of way, but more as a communal experience. Writing has long been how I process the world – the good, the bad and the in-between. I love converting my thoughts to words and putting them in some form in hopes of connecting with someone else. That’s what this blog has been about, and it has provided some lovely perks along those lines, but again, no 401K.

I answered 100 questions in an online strengths quiz. Survey says…

I know I’ll figure it all out eventually and storytelling in some fashion will have to be a part of it. Meanwhile, I take comfort in the infamous words of Lloyd Dobler, the underachieving yet endearing kick-boxer in Cameron Crowe’s 1989 classic movie Say Anything. Lloyd pursues the class valedictorian, the beautiful Diane Court, and during a tense dinner scene, is grilled by Diane’s father about his plans for the future. Lloyd knows exactly what he doesn’t want to do which he earnestly articulates in the often recited monologue below:

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career. I don’t want to do that.

Like Lloyd Dobler, I’m looking for a dare to be great situation.

I believe in Lloyd Dobler and the value of knowing what you don’t want to do. After all, in the end, he got the pretty girl and a hopeful future. As for me, I guess I’ll have to write the rest of my story.

I might just make it after all.

Continue reading →

It’s in the cards

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My sister has moved 22 times as an adult. And no, she’s not in the armed services, the French Foreign Legion or the witness protection program.

I guess you could say that she’s a rolling stone.

She’s lived in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia (twice), California, Maryland (twice), Ohio (twice) and is now back in California.

And she’s been through many acquisitions and purges in her 35 years of moving but there has been one item that has always made the cut – a box filled with every note, letter and card I’ve ever sent her starting when she went to camp when she was 12.

The box is not organized in any way, shape or form and if you knew my sister at all, you would laugh at the very idea of her organizing such a thing.

I pulled out the box while I was visiting her this week and it was a little like that weeper movie, Somewhere in Time, where Christopher Reeve is swept back in time by looking at an old painting. Years and years documented by Hallmark.

My sister is seven years younger than me and she was only 38 when we lost both of our parents. That’s terribly young to lose your rudders and the loss has certainly informed much of her life since then.

As the older sister I was always somewhat of an authority figure (okay, you can say bossy), even if she rarely took my advice. When our parents died in 2002, I became sister and mother, a dual role I desperately want to get right.

This is the essence of my sister.

Rummaging through the box, I have made several observations:

My handwriting over the years has declined from marginally legible to Straight Outta Serial Killer. I wonder if it’s too late for med school.
I pick out the best cards. I knew which ones were from me before even opening them. And many of them made me smile – again.
Almost every note to my sister is a form of a pep talk – only the subject matter is different depending on the decade – boyfriends, jobs and diets, always diets.
Postage has really gone up a lot in 40 years.
Those “Forever” stamps are looking like a good investment.

I pulled out a letter from 1981 that I had written my sister – on yellow legal pad paper, my stationary of choice for many years. She was living in Lynchburg, VA with my aunt and uncle and taking general studies courses at the local community college. Her grades in high school were not stellar and she was feeling like a loser while many of her friends were enrolled at various colleges and universities.

I was trying to make her feel good about herself and her future and my letter made me laugh out loud when I got to this part: Don’t look back – the past is nothing but a bunch of Kodak snapshots dumped in a box in the closet.

Sisters, circa 1974.

How prophetic I was!

I don’t know if my letter helped her but it all worked out well as she went on to study at The University of Virginia and is now managing several breast cancer centers in Southern California.

But it’s the cards that really get to me. Almost all of them have a picture of two young girls on the front and that is the image that has sustained me over the years – the two of us, together – usually laughing and usually up to some shenanigans.

The inscription on this cards says, “I’m so glad I always have you to lean on.”

It is a rare and precious thing to be deeply known by another human being – especially one that you are related to and my sister knows me in all manner of ways. That’s why she had a case of seltzer water (orange) chilling for me upon my arrival and vases of fresh-cut hydrangeas (my fave) throughout the condo.

And she knows my heart and my pain and she has suffered greatly these past few months since I lost my job – a job that was more like a calling to me. She was 3,000 miles and three time zones away as we weathered this great storm together. And yet, she walked every step of this ordeal with me.

Some of it was good. Some of it wasn’t. But through thick and thin, they stayed close, and they were sure they always would. And this made the world good again.

That’s why I was so grateful to have the opportunity to share a special dinner with her on my first night here. I sat across from her at the table and looked into her sweet face and told her that in my entire life, I’ve never felt another person be so present to my pain.

She cried. I cried. I think the waiter might have even cried.

We’ve had so much fun together this week and “no fights” as she remarked the other night, which initiated a hilarious “greatest hits” recap of some of our most famous disagreements.

My favorite story is from years ago. I was living in Greensboro at the time and she was in Kensington, MD. We got into a heated argument about, well, who knows, and I got so mad that I threw the phone, the portable phone mind you, against the wall and it shattered into pieces. She called back a minute or two later and my partner answered the phone. My sister said very earnestly, “I think Addison and I got disconnected.”

I’m giggling now thinking about how clueless she was to my rage.

Fortunately, most of our disconnections have been few and far between over the years. Nothing a call or, yes, a card couldn’t repair, but I’ll tell you one thing, we’re going to need a bigger box.

My sister, my lifeline.

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