Me, me, me

Sisters

My closest sister phoned yesterday from Botswana. My eldest sister, who is in town from BC for a conference, came over for dinner. This morning I told my kids the story of another sister (who lives in Ontario) who shoved a cotton ball up her nose when she was little, and my mom only found out when the cotton rotted and my sister gave off a very bad smell. I called all three of my Montreal sisters yesterday to pick names for our Xmas gift exchange. I managed to connect with each of my six sisters in some way within about a 16 hour period.

I love being part of a big family, and I can't imagine life without sisters. We are blessed in a myriad of ways, but one way that stands out for me today is how we can still talk to one another and enjoy each other.

But that's not entirely true. The sister in Ontario is estranged from our mother, and so we don't see her much. She's effectively cut herself off from the rest of us as well. Fortunately, now her daughter and son are old enough that they come and visit us (including my mom), so we can feel some connection to that semi-lost sister. This is a sadness in our family that is always under the surface. Because we see each other and talk and work things out, we have got past much of the sad and damaging past that we have as a family. This other sister seems to be stuck in a time where all of those very bad times are still very real and alive. I wish we could heal our family, but none of us really knows where to start. It's really between her and our mom, after all.

But we'll have another Christmas without her, though we will all send her cards. It's a tear in the otherwise beautiful fabric of our family.