O Sister, Where Art Thou?

I am looking forward to this weekend with fear, trepidation, and a creeping sense that I may break out in hysterical laughter at all the wrong moments.

Yes. I will be amongst my sisters. The three of us are vastly different and although we love each other, I find that keeping at least one state in between myself and my sisters is a healthy thing.

Technically, they are my cousins but we were raised together and they will always be more like sisters then any of my biological siblings. They are both funny and crazy and whenever we get together (every five years or so?) I’m always glad we did. I just need a few days in meditative silence to recover.

I am the youngest. My sister A. is six years older than me and S. is six or seven years older still. There is enough difference in our age that we really don’t remember a lot about each other growing up. Our mom was a little different in her child rearing for each of us and when we relate stories of our childhood, it usually ends up with the other two saying “where was I when this happened?” We were three only children.

My niece is getting married and my daughter will be in the wedding. Last weekend my sister and my niece came over to fit the gown on my daughter. Both my sister and my niece can make anything on the sewing machine. They can just lay fabric over your head like Charlie Brown at Halloween and somehow come up with a pattern that ends up being fabulous. I can do that with knitting and I suppose I don’t think it’s all that impressive when I make it but it totally knocks me out when they do it.

Anyway, my daughter is a lot like me. We don’t dress up unless forced to at gunpoint, I haven’t worn make-up in years and she doesn’t wear a lot, and we are as far from froo-froo as it is possible to get. I watched and listened as my sister and niece kept up a continuous, simultaneous conversation while fitting my daughter’s dress. It was filled with creative differences and mother/daughter angst and laughter and it was a total hoot.

And when they left, we all took a cleansing breath. It was like being in the eye of the hurricane.

The weekend starts tomorrow as I catch the bus to the airport to pick up the rental car. We’ll head down to the cities Saturday morning. I want to start early so we can stop for a yummy breakfast and get down to the theater for the dress rehearsal with plenty of time left over. I have actually already plotted out a side trip to a yarn store right before the rehearsal.

Ahh yarn. More powerful than heroin. I will be able to stay completely relaxed all weekend long if I can keep one hand in my purse holding a skein of baby alpaca…

The eye wall is coming…