LIFE WITH KRISTYEMAC: June 2013

Yes, I Have A Sister!

First of all, I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Yes, I said it....and yes, it's true. I grew up with a "secret" sister who lived up north and was as much a mystery to me in my younger days as Santa Claus. From early in life I can remember this beautiful, kind and strange visitor would come to our house in the summer and everything I knew about my family would be questioned with no answers given. It was just to be accepted...with no questions.

Lots of my friends had sisters. They talked about them, fought with them, loved them....and lived with them. I was told this girl was my brother's sister. Well...if she was my brother's sister, why wasn't she MY sister. I really wanted her to be MY sister. And, if she was my brother's sister, why didn't she live at OUR house? My brother was nine years older than me and this "sister" was one year younger than him. She didn't call my mother "Mother" and she didn't call my daddy "Daddy". Her mother was my great Aunt Dolores who lived in Pennsylvania. My mother's name was also Dolores. I was very confused.

Every couple of years my grandparents would take me along on their trip up north to visit my Ma-Ma's two sisters. The story to me had it that the three of them were raised in an orphanage and were separated by marriage when my Aunt Dolly and Aunt Dolores chose husbands from up north while my Ma-Ma married a local boy from Falcon, NC. Their lives and our lives were VERY different. Can you imagine how confusing it was as a child to go "way up there" and not be able to ask why my sister was there and had a different mother, who was also my great-aunt?

I've decided not to get into the when's, where's or why's of how this all came about. Let's just lump it into that dysfunctional family description I started out with.

The GOOD thing about this is that I eventually grew up! With that came the opportunity for me to get to know this stranger who IS my sister on my own terms. Come to find out she had never known quite what to do with me any more than I knew what to do with her. Let's just put it this way....and you figure it out:

My sister wound up my cousin, my great- aunt wound up my sister's mother, my mother was my sister's cousin, my brother's sister's mother was also his great- aunt, my sister's grandmother was her aunt, my sister's granddaddy was also her uncle, my nephews are also my cousins, that also makes my half-sister my cousin...and on and on and on.....

My mother passed away without making any of it right so we all have the different stories we've heard over the years about why this all happened. But, the good thing is...YES, I HAVE A SISTER!! Just like my friends, we've had some good times and some bad times. We've hugged and cried and laughed...gone for periods of not talking...then hugged and cried and laughed some more.

I think we passed the test when we decided to take a primitive camping trip to Maine for two weeks WITHOUT my mother, but WITH my brother and his family, my sister and her family....and me and my husband. Two weeks of living in a little circle of tents, sleeping under the stars, getting stuck in the Maine coast pluff mud and learning how to interact as a real family. Thank goodness my mother didn't go. I sometimes think that my sister's idea to tent camp may have had an underlying purpose. And I'm glad. We had a ball....just like we were a real family...and we are!

Don't know why my sister's been on my mind lately...but she is. Could be the years that have accumulated...our families are grown with families of their own. I think I'm gonna have to do somethin' about makin' a visit pretty soon. After all, sisters are supposed to stick together. Heck, she's really just "down the road"!