My Sister in What Could Become an Ongoing Series

My sister and I have always had a relationship that was tentative at best. We competed for my parent's very limited time and attention as children, and tried to be as different from each other as we could manage. I was the intellectual, she had street smarts. I was reserved, she was a social butterfly. I was always a walking fashion disaster, she could (and still can) give Milan a run for its money. Even though we both went into the arts, I went for theater and she went into music. But perhaps that's where we realized that we had some similarities, besides growing up under our parents. No one else knows what it's like to grow up under the understated insanity that was our parents' system of childrearing.

If you read this blog with any regularity (and no one does), then you know that my sister and I got in a fight on my birthday this year and we had barely spoken three words to each other since then. Anyway, my sister was going to be in town for a wedding this past weekend, and I couldn't very well refuse her a place to stay. I spent a few hours cleaning up the worst of the dump I call my apartment and made up the daybed. She came in late at night on Saturday after seeing a movie after the wedding, and we had an abbreviated brunch before going to a movie. Afterwards, she went for a run and I went down for a nap. This all sounds very mundane, but at the end, after she admitted that she'd put her towel between the sheets because she found hair on them, she hugged me. My sister never hugs family members. Most of her adult life she's been trying to keep us from touching her. So despite the feeling that I was hugging a hatstand, it was gratifying. I guess I didn't do such a bad job of hostessing after all. Perhaps some things are mended between us after all. We'll always be very different, but perhaps we can be friendly, after all.

Thanksgiving Weekend Update

Well, since I last posted, some guarded optimism has slipped into my political outlook. Granted, I don't think I've done nearly enough to fight the fascism in America, especially since I read the title and jacket blurb on Alice Walker's latest book: We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For. That about sums it up: we're the ones who are helping to run the show, if not actively, then by our complicity. I don't want any potential nieces or nephews looking at me in fifteen, twenty years saying, "You really fucked the world up, didn't you?" Of course, they may say that anyway, barring a return to Eden, but at least I don't want to find myself agreeing with them.

Thanksgiving went by relatively painlessly. We went out, and I made a point of not ordering the turkey and much to my surprise, niether did my mother. We both had some prime cut of something with a far more expressive face than a turkey's, and I enjoyed every bite. My sister spent most of the time talking about her job (she's a music teacher in a Catholic school), which is nice, because then I didn't have to talk about mine because I never have much to say about librarianship except when it goes wrong. Okay, so that last sentence was rather tortured, but nobody's reading anyway. Mom and I went to see The Queen while Dad worked and my sister partied with friends who still live in town. We also celebrated Dad and my sister's birthdays with presents, ice cream, and cake. I like ice cream and cake. The presents were recieved well, though since I gave books, the real verdict isn't in yet. Mom has suggested that Dad has enough books that he hasn't read, and to get him something else for Christmas. I looked at ties at Carson Pirie Scott this morning, but I keep seeing books that I think Dad would like. The perils of being required to read book catalogs professionally; people wish they had my problems. I had to return to Chicago to work my shift on Saturday, and then my sister came up and spent a night with me while attending a wedding. We went and saw The Fountain, which I really enjoyed and my sister merely said was typical Aronofsky. Maybe it wasn't a great movie, but it was fun to look at and the story held together well enough. Besides, it takes balls of brass to make something that ambitious and that different from your previous work that young. I'll just say one more thing on that subject, to quote Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Fire bad. Tree pretty."

So my sister goes back to California via O'Hare much later than I would have suggested, and I got the apartment back to myself. I didn't realize how much I value my solitude. It means I don't have to do anything I don't want to, like getting things out of piles and into their proper places. Or throwing out the old, broken printer. Or being able to see the surface of the dining room table. Yup, I'm a slob. A slob who values her privacy, so what am I doing blogging? Ah, well. I need to make sure I wake up in the morning, so I will say more about my sister tomorrow, on her twenty-eighth birthday.

Remember for Tuesday...

When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

-Sinclair Lewis