Last weekend, I met my sister for the first time. Well, technically speaking, that is not exactly accurate. I always knew that I had six sisters. We all grew up together in one house, with two parents, in a town in New England. I am one of “the little ones,” the bottom two rungs of the family ladder. There are so many stories I could tell of my family—some of them funny, some painful, some just plain odd, given how different life in the 1970s was from life today. But what is most on my mind right now is how grateful I am for the chance I was given last weekend to meet a sister who emerged from the darkness.
Although only two rungs from me on the family ladder, the five years that divide us felt like a lifetime growing up. We weren’t close; I was closest to the two sisters who came right before and after me. She was just out of reach. I remember being in junior high and seeing her go out disco dancing with her friends. Fast forward to high school, and I remember her working a series of hotel jobs—night auditor, mostly. While maybe not the same job for very long, I remember recognizing in her a certain resilience; she seemed always to be able to find the next job. I remember her temper, too; a volatility that occasionally flared out of control, like a firework that causes a moment of fear on the 4th of July.
My connection with her came and went as my life became more about myself in the next few years ... college, grad school, marriage, career. During this time, while my life filled itself with joy and growth, my sister’s life became more challenged and isolated. She moved out of state and lived for a time with an abusive man. Her weight issues, a lifelong struggle, became severe. Although she fought her way slowly to later-in-life college and masters degrees, her willingness to work dissolved. She isolated herself, and her health issues began to mount.
