Got to thinking about this - again - after coming across another letter from Mim to Mom, back when she was attending the University of Houston, in the middle '60s. Boy, do her letters home illuminate so much that befuddled me over the years.
Mim mentioned hearing from me "finally." Wondering - how many kids in their early teens think about writing letters? Frankly, I doubt that it sank in, then or ever, that any of them, including my idolized big sis, particularly cared about hearing from me.
In a particularly telling paragraph, Mim writes, "I don't know why she (me) misses me so - we only fight when I'm home. I think she misses me taking her places and likes the idea of missing someone."
Fights? I don't remember any. But maybe she is confusing how disagreeable she seemed to have found me (which I only learned decades later) with actual fights. Was she really that unaware of how I utterly had her up on an untouchable pedestal? Hullo - right up through my early 20s, she was my sun moon stars. And even then, it was she who turned away from me (having disagreed with her for the 1st time) rather than vice versa. She never noticed my lack of friends? Didn't need them - SHE was my everything.
For some reason, am reminded of a quirky thing she did throughout my late 20s & early 30s. (I've written about this before, but seems to apply here.) She'd recommend going to Sunday brunch at the lushy plushy DuPont Hotel or the epic Plaza, or lunch in the Algonquin's legendary Rose Room - all buffets. As we worked our way down the tables, she'd look around, then make a disparaging remark - about US. Took several times before I responded, "Speak for yourself." Couldn't understand why she'd intentionally target buffets if she felt so conspicuous, until Peter explained it - she set it up IN ORDER to point out we stuck out like sore thumbs. Go figure.
In the same way, am still clueless at why she went to such lengths to ensure that my loyalties were to her & her alone. Was it utterly unconcious? The scathing remarks made as asides about other people & families, even relatives, she considered hopelessly bourgeois (learned that word at a very early age), the snide asides about a variety of things, the relentlessly negative comments about just about everyone & everything, while WE were forever painted as eternally outside the pale, something still held to be somehow above the common herd. It all tied me too her, utterly & completely.
At the same time, the cynicism & snark I thought were the foundation of standard communication, held others at a distance, confused when the sunny gal turned into a dark soul.
As for missing her because she took me places - almost right. Missed the PERSON, not the rides.
For almost a quarter century, SHE was the sun orbited by my sub-planet. She never really GOT that?
After Ian's death, consciously or not, Mim sucked me into her gravitational pull. It was easy - she snidely trashed everyone else, highlighted our outsider status within a close-knit community, was the epicenter of every glorious moment of my life. Yet, her letter paints her as unaware of my adoration & complete fealty, above everything, to her & her alone.
It's quite possible Mim didn't consciously realize her impact - not the self-gutting brunch scenarios, not how effectively she instilled in her baby sister a ghastly communication style (would be decades before it dawned on me that how she spoke with me was nothing like the way she communicated with the larger world), perhaps not any of it.
"I think she... likes the idea of missing someone."
Guess that will always astonish me. For almost a quarter century, I held her as the fabulously flaming sun around which my piddly planet did adoring orbits.
Reading the letter, putting it in context with other similarly HUH? revelations, am thinking that it might not be that we inhabited alternative universes or that what I considered a blazing sun might well have been a black hole.
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