a lifetime of getting it wrong

It took a letter just shy of 50 years old to wake me up to a lifetime of getting things wrong.  Or not...

For practically my first quarter century, I thought that my older sister was the sun moon stars to my inconsequential planetoid.  For over the second quarter, I thought that she was so blindsided by Ian's death, she consciously acted in ways that would bind me to her, heart & soul.  In my third quarter, am facing the reality that it might have been intentional, it might just have been her...  

Oh, how lovely it would be to truly believe it was unintentional on her part.  Sadly, she could intentionally devastate her youngers, even her olders.  Within a year of being married to Peter, Pam commented on how the whole family was afraid of Mim.  While we thought her observation a total hoot, she was spot on.  The fact is that she knew everyone's hot button & just how to push it.  With Mom, it was withdrawing affection.  With me, it was denying connection.  No idea what it was with Dad, but am sure there was one.  She knew just where to go with Ian - one day when they were coming home from school & he triggered her ire, she reached into the stack of books he was carrying, drew out his favorite, and dropped it to the pavement, breaking its spine.  

For certain sure, she never seemed to get the sense that she was adored by her baby sister, nor a clue that she was admired by all of the family & considerable more, in spite of her degree from NYU, her masters from Rutgets, and being officially recognized with a formal proclamation by the New Jersey State Legislature.  The letter she wrote Mom from Houston is sort of pathetic, in her assumption that her baby sis didn't miss her, just what she could do for me or - worse - the idea of missing someone, rather than specifically HER.

Been thinking about that thought - "I think she ... likes the idea of missing someone."  WHY would anyone want to miss a generic someone?  For the drama of feeling completely alone?  Did she really never understand that I couldn't be fully myself without her wind filling my sails?

Praise be for old letters. They reveal realities that would have seemed incredible if someone had suggested them.  As tied - bound - as I felt to her, she apparently felt totally ... what would the word be?  She rented a t.v. for one day a week in order to watch The Big Valley in order to have a way to communicate with me.  Sheez.  

It doesn't matter whether she acted intentionally or unintentionally, whether she meant to emotionally bind me to her or had no idea the impact of how she acted around me.  What's clear is that the certainty with which I once saw things was all wrong, that I spent a lifetime of being sure about something that could be totally wrong.  Or not.  Will never know.

This I do know, for certain sure.  Mim is an amazing sister with remarkable gifts, some of which she's shared & some of which she seems incapable of seeing, let alone embracing.  I might have spent a lifetime getting her all wrong, but at least it was a lifetime of appreciating her as the unique incredible exasperating person she most definitely is.