wee small hours - MIM

Woke up in the wee small hours, thinking about my sister, Mim.  At 62 to her 70, I'm just as baffled as ever.  Will there ever come a time when thoughts of "What happened?" won't ruffle my rest?

When I was a very impressionable teenager, she totally rocked, was the embodiment of cool.  Did a summer workshop in Greenwich Village's Circle in the Square Theatre, went to far off places for college, traveled to Hawaii & Ireland (by herself!), batted about ideas & become great friends with brilliant professors, lived in San Francisco in the height of the '60s, was nanny to a large family in northern NJ whose Dad was remarrying.  Did amazing things.

But she never brought that personality back home.  At least, not back home to me.  When she was in her hometown, she blended as much as possible into the background.  She had the gifts to host discussion "salons" - friends coming for something to sip & wonderful conversations on a wildly wide range of topics.  Instead, we talked about politics & Pitcairns & the latest episode of The Big Valley.  

She was brilliant abroad, incredibly small at home.  From things she's shared, it seems that she felt confined within family, expecting that none of us expected anything brilliant or awesome from her, when the reverse was the reality.

To this day, am baffled by Mim getting her undergrad degree from NYU  & masters from Rutgers.  Not by her being accepted or graduating, but by HOW she financed such costly accomplishments.  NOT the sort of thing discussed at home - talk about ignoring the elephant in the room. How do you make virtually no money, have no apparent independent means of support, yet afford getting not only your undergrad, but a grad degree, one from a top tier & the other from a highly respected university?  I wondered, but it was a verboten subject at home.  It just happened. 

Woke up in the wee small hours contemplating the mystery that is my sister.  Not the sort of thought that welcomes back sleep.  Or, sadly, illumination.  .