For My Sister

How do you know your place in life when you have no place? I have no home. It was eloquently and accurately pointed out by Lamborghini boy this summer: I have no home. I am not an American. I have no traditional roots. My parents live in a place entirely separate from that which I grew up. My siblings live elsewhere. My cousins, aunts, uncles, and other assorted relatives live in states I consider “vacation territory”. I grew up knowing that I couldn’t pick my nearest and dearest out of a police line up, for better or worse, but we were family in some odd sense of the word. When I went to the last of my family reunion, in 1995, my uncle tried to set me up with my cousin (not knowing who I was but recognizing that I was cute), I had a fairly full-fledged crowd phobic panic attack and had to be sequestered to the bar by my aunt, who is only 4 years older than I and whom I had just met that afternoon. Lest you question my family, let me just explain the dynamics: my mother is one of 6 children. My father is one of 15. Although I come with 2 siblings, I am from a large family. Make no mistake about it; when I say family, I include 100 of first tier relatives. Not counting my cousins’ spouses and children. A family reunion for my father’s side can easily be 250 people.

So it came as quite a surprise to me when an Italian man I was seeing felt free reign to cut up Americans in my presence. After registering my discontent he summed it up this way: I am not an American. Not a typical one in any way. I am a woman without a home, without roots; I have no claims, no ties, nothing to hold me to a particular place or time; I am a floating branch in the river.

Chew on that for a moment. I, with approximately 100 direct, blood relatives, have no home. I, who attended the same school from kindergarten to high school graduation; I, who defends US foreign policy and admit to voting for Cheney, because he is a ‘”hometown boy” have “no roots.” My parents left my hometown as soon as possible without causing trauma and distress to their youngest child. Both of my parents are the only siblings in their respective families to move away from the fold in order to discover life on their own terms. I don’t know all of my cousins, it is true, but I have never felt an outsider, a total unknown entity to the fold. They have, for their parts, never treated me, or my family, as foreign. So why should I feel, at this age, that the Italian, who knew so little about me, and cared even less to know me, got it dead center, bull’s eye, right. In my heart of hearts, know he’s right. Bastard.

I have no home. I haven’t had a home since I left my parents’ home all those years ago. My life has pretty much been dedicated to my whims. And we, the We that make up my immediate family, have all been great with that. Until this year. Well, truth be told, they were fine with it until I told them I was moving to Ireland. And in a moment of absolute honesty (which is admittedly rare for me) I couldn’t understand why they weren’t happy to see me go. I couldn’t understand why my father, who so rarely displays any emotion let alone negative emotion, was so upset that I was getting what I’d worked so long and hard for. I couldn’t understand why my mother was only concerned that I’d not have the finances to come home on a moments notice. I couldn’t understand why any of my family was upset I’d be moving across the ocean. Because I haven’t lived near any of my family for close to 15 years, I couldn’t get it thru my head. Until this Christmas.

This year for Christmas I got a living dose of Ebenezer Scrooge. I went home; to see my family, my niece and nephew, to see my friends, and how my old life got on without me. There were no ghosts. There were no angels named Clarence wishing against the odds that I’d get them wings. It was just Life. It proved to be more than I could bear.

Let me preface this by saying that I am very, very far away. And although my family and friends know what I am doing quite consistently, I do not really know what my family and friends are doing. No one ever has any news for me when we chat or email. No one has gossip, everything was reported as boring and mundane; same old, same old. The reality was anything but same old, same old. That came as quite a shock. In most cases it was a pleasant discovery. I want my family and friends to grow and prosper. I want them to discover new and deeper loves. I want to discover new depths to all of them. But I also want to know their hardships along the way. I didn’t sign up for only the exciting parts. I never said I was only there when the getting was good. So when I went back, after a two-year absence, in which I had documented the vast majority of my life, I was shocked to discover disease, divorce, and strife among love, happiness and well being in my friends and family.

I know I am here, living for many others. I know, in some weird way, I’m taking one for the team. But in my mind, being the active member of the team didn’t exclude me from the important, intimate details. And those details, extracted over the course of lunches, happy hours, drinks, etc… made me realize just how far away I really am. I’m not just a quick plane ride away. I’m not just a few time zones away. I’m “consider the jet lag”, “what time is it there”, “what day can you get here” away. I’m a lifetime away. I’m an emotional mindset away. For the first time ever, I understand what it means to not be on the same continent as my family. And I? Am lucky. In this day and age of communications, moving to another country isn’t akin to the total banishment of other centuries. I pick up the phone, dial an access number and talk to my mother for as long as I want to, child labor in some horrific unnamed country be damned. Mom and I can argue about my last email, her hair cut, whatever, and it’s like I’m just round the corner.

But I’m not. I’m a lifetime away. And for the first time ever, I wondered, while driving away from my sister’s house if that’s where I belong. I flew to her house for Family Christmas and it was wonderful. Except the realization that my mother outranks me when it comes to time with my siblings, their kids, and their spouses. (In that particular order even) so I flew to be with my sister, I was there for 8 days and I spent a whopping 2 hours on the sofa eating pizza and watching “House” with her, not realizing that I’d be pulling away from the house in mere days, waving out the window at her, standing under the deck, looking every bit as wretched as I felt knowing that it’s going to be years before I see her again, let alone be in her house again. I flew 6 time zones to watch network television. I spent $1500 to wish I’d spent more time there than with the friends.

Which wouldn’t be such a dramatic thing except that my sister has health problems. And in the year since she’s been diagnosed with such health problems (it sounds so serious, doesn’t it?) I can see the difference in her. She’s changed because of it. And I can only wonder if the life I am leading, which is actually (mostly) sister approved, is the one that I should indeed be leading. I have nothing to tie me here. I have nothing to tie me there either, but what I cannot escape is the overwhelming sense that I should be there while the getting’s good. I should be there while she’s in great shape and fine and sharp and the sister I’ve always know. I should be there to help if things get rough, if she needs it and if she won’t let anyone else help her. I should be near “Just In Case” which I recognize as alarmist thinking.

But this is my sister. My beautiful, brilliant, genius, grounded, bitchy sister, whom I love and adore beyond all reason. And in a year, I can see that she’s not the same. It breaks my heart as much as it frustrates her. I want her to conquer the world. I want her to have everything she’s ever wanted. I want her to be as invincible as I’ve always thought she was. But she’s not. She fragile. And human. And it isn’t fair. It’s just not.

And going so far, to spend so little time, to see such a difference in a short period of time, was upsetting, to state it mildly. And as I pulled away, watching her waving at me, under the carport in the rain, looking so very sad, I cannot thing of anything but this: Am I in the right place?

The thing is, I had a job offer the day before I left to interview here in Ireland. I sat for a courtesy interview, favor to a friend sort of thing, and then they offered me an incredible opportunity and double my salary. “Have a great time in Ireland, call me when you get back” Fat chance now, thanks. Because the job was 30 minutes from my sister. And she told me to come here. In no uncertain terms, my sister told me to come here, marry rich and never look back. I’ve been doing exceedingly well on parts 1 and 3.

But now I wonder. I do believe absolutely, no matter schlockly it sounds, that God has my best interests at heart and no matter how often I fuck up his plans, he finds a way around me. So there I was, moaning about how it had never really been an option to live and earn a proper living near my family when it fell in my lap. So I threw it away and moved here thinking “What’s the big deal? It’s a plane ride away. Besides, that’s what credit cards are for”. And for the first year it was fine. But now I wonder. When do you stop living for yourself if you are the only member of your “family”? My sister has a husband and kids. My brother has a wife. My parents have each other and in-laws for better or worse. I have myself. And I couldn’t go on without my brother. I couldn’t go on without my sister. But they could, because they have other halves.

No, this isn’t what this is about. It isn’t “poor single me” it’s about the fact that I don’t know where I belong and although that’s suited me this far in life, I’ve just seen the detrimental side of such a life. It’s about the fact that in 10 years, my sister won’t be who she is today. I probably won’t either but the fact remains that if I wanted to, I could be the same exact person. My sisters’ genetics are against that idea. In 10 years, if we’re lucky, she’ll be the same. But she has no choice in the matter. I, however, do. For whatever reason, I have a different genetic makeup than my sister and in 10 years time the only thing I will be worried about is my liver and the lines on my face.

So where do I belong? This is the big question that I never thought I’d have to answer. What should my life be, knowing that I have what I want and worked for? Where is my place in life? What am I going to regret the least??? Do I go home and live a life I don’t want, knowing that I’m near my sister during what may be her best years or do I stay here, knowing that I’m leading the life she wants me to (and that she would indeed live had it not been for love, kids, and basically almost everything she’d ever asked for) even though I’d be returning when things turned from bad to dire and she might only be a shell of her glorious self?

I’m just so far away. I cannot do both, that I recognize as impossibility. But how do you decide where your true place is in life when you have no proper place? How do you decide what matters most if you’re really aren’t sure if what you see is the future or a fluke? How do you make your own life when all you want is that life for somebody else?