Excuse Me While I Primal Scream. (Because no one can yank your chain like family)

AAARRRGGHHYAAAAAH!!!
Sorry. Thank you.

Overall I had a nice visit with the sister. Physically, she seems pretty much the same as the last time I saw her a couple of years ago. Emotionally, she is pretty much a whack job. She is just not very tightly wrapped, my sister. When you least expect it she’ll say the oddest things.

This is my sister who has had four nasty, bad marriages and four nasty, back-stabby divorces. This cannot be good for your soul or your mental health. I have no idea why she married these jerks. (Except for hubbie #1 would have avoided knowing any of the others. Tom thought the last three were scum too.) (He never met #1.) Anyway, with each divorce she lost her current property—big house/horse ranch/hobby farm/regular house—moving down the economic food chain with each failed marriage. In fact, in her last relationship she managed to lose two houses because she sold a duplex that was her ultimate back-up retirement plan and plowed that money into her marriage to “prove her love.” So now she is living in (yet another) new house trying to get by on disability but cashing in about 10Gs of CDs each year because the pension just isn’t enough to live on. I sincerely hope she doesn’t lose this house because her money is just about gone and I don’t think she could afford to buy another house.

We played cards. We visited long-time family friends. I met some of her new friends.

Sister has become a Christian and most of her new friends are part of a church group. This has been very good for her. She belongs to a churchy “family” and feels needed and involved—all important things. I hope she can stick with this church and not just burn through it. I told Tom that since now she a Bride of Christ perhaps she won’t feel such a burning need to get married again.

Anyway, sister feels bereft and insecure. She has lost much. She is so nostalgic for our childhood. She is also very insecure in her memories of that childhood. She often says “We had such exceptional parents. How could anyone live up to them!?”

I should also mention that nothing is ever sister’s fault. Other people make her do things. While talking she constantly refers to the people who mistreated her, stole from her or made her do stupid things. Usually they are called Hubbie1, Hubbie2, etc., especially Hubbies 1 and 3. But in stories of her lost childhood I am the villain.

For instance, while I was there we gave some old photos to our local town museum. While we are in there chatting with the curator Sister suddenly accuses me of stealing her high school yearbook from the attic! “It was in my box of stuff, clearly labeled ‘save for sister’ while I was living in Australia for a couple of years. You must have taken it and now those memories are lost to me!”

I am baffled, but know that I can’t just let this pass because I don’t want to have stupid disagreement in front of strangers. If I let her comment pass, then it will become a True Fact in her mind. So I say “No. Why would I take your high school yearbook? Besides, I was living in India then so I couldn’t have.” Sister starts to babble about who else could have done it and on & on while the bemused museum curator looks on. I felt like such an idiot.

Sister is still mad at me for “selling” her bicycle forty-odd years ago. She was married to hubbie1 then and hadn’t ridden it for a few years. Mom gave it to my geography teacher who was going on a two-year teaching mission to Africa. This was a good thing, IMO, but evidently my fault because it was my teacher and now her bike is gone. How can sister still be hung up on this?

It is hard to look at old family photos with sister because she gets miffed or angry over missing childhood artifacts and the people who tricked her out of them. It’s sad, really.

Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with a litany of pathetic complaints. Let’s just say it is good to be home. There is no place like home! And now I am off to do some catch-up reading. I may add twisted sister stories as they come to me.