Unexpected Phone Call

It was nice to get a call from my sister today ... a birth-sister, not necessarily a spiritual one. I have literally millions of spiritual sisters (and I love every one of them!) but only two physical sisters.

You'd think that, due to the relative scarcity of physical sisters, it would behoove us to expend far greater effort than normal into the project called 'getting along'. But not so.

I am their only brother, they the only two sisters I have ever had. We all lost a younger brother many years ago. Yet it seems that nearly any pretext is sufficient for us to have a falling apart that lasts for years ... and years. Blood may be thicker than water, but bitterness is a stone wall that only cold may penetrate.

Sherry and I are edging toward understanding and compromise. I suppose that old age is mellowing us for we have certainly had our explosive differences in the past. She traveled from Georgia this week to be with her grandchildren and took the time to call me from my Dads house. There have been times when I learned of her presence only after she had left. Last time she came up here she surprised me by simply showing up at my door. This time she called. Likely tomorrow I will get to see her.

Linda will speak to others in the family but not return my (infrequent) calls or (infrequent) e-mails. Fully half of her adult life I have not even known how to contact her at all. It might be reasonable to say that, even though I know the addresses of her electronic devices, I still don't know how to contact her. When she contacts me, she is usually angry and abusive of tongue. It is her insanity speaking, her dependence on alcohol to quiet the ghosts of days long past and the conflicts in her for which she has never found resolution and may never find peace. I listen peaceably for as long as I can, then hang up the phone. Usually in anger.

When she is (more or less) sober, I don't think that there is much that she likes about me. When drunk, she feels free to read the inventory of my wrongs (real and imaginary) aloud. There is no refuting her blurred logic ... she is immune to facts and reason. She does not want to converse. She wants only to be heard.

She is mad at me for finding peace in my religion ... a peace she cannot find in hers.

She is mad at me for marrying happily. I think she'd be happier if my marriage failed because then she could console me as an equal ... one failure to another.

I can't go there. When I sobered up I was in just as bad of condition as she is today. I was every bit as twisted in my thinking because we live in a world that does NOT make sense, that is sewn together with inconsistencies and is patched with out right contradictions. But I was less interested in shedding the alcohol than I was in ridding myself of the thinking that made intoxication more than just 'okay'. I was crazy and it took alcohol to even my keel. But, by the time the keel got even, the captain was drunk ... so he kept on drinking until the ship began to take water over the bow on the other side of the boat.

I lost a house. I lost three wives. I lost, in a horribly profound sense, my sons. I lost the family I grew up in (each and every one of whom was battling their own demons).

I lost my way. What I might have been, in a saner and more nurturing world, was lost.

Those are just the facts of life. My life. Well, some of them, anyways. I needed to work on shedding the insanity or I would never be able to keep the rum at bay. It has been a tough row to hoe with a lot of set-backs. Recently I learned that one of the hinderances tugging at me was ADHD. That fits in well with the other things I have come to know about myself so I now take an expensive, but non-addictive, medication for it.

Now, I am happily married, have a stable and growing spiritual life. I am warm, fed and loved. I am even pursuing a satisfying career as an artist. Just as some of my former occupations fed into the whirling dervish that was my mind, this one feeds into the peace that is now growing in my heart. There is no real danger of my getting rich ... but I have real hopes of being able to meet my minimalist financial obligations.

And my sister would prefer that I be more like her. It would be easier to accept me that way.

That makes sense, if you think about it. I'd be more comfortable with her if she were more like me.

Linda ... make a start ... answer your email from your brother. Your only brother.