Ann

I have a sister.

It's true I do. For years no one would have known it necessarily because I didn't talk about her much. There is six and a half years difference between us. We didn't run in the same circles growing up, so of course friends didn't overlap. We didn't talk much as adults. We lived and learned about each other through my mother. Isn't that a very odd way of doing things. It's the way my mother set it up.

This past Christmas we got a chance to talk and started to rebuild some bridges - still not understanding why they needed RE-building.

The reason for the need started to become clear near the end of January and early February. Our Mother had been the master puppeteer. She guided and directed and shared stories and items and tidbits that were designed to keep us apart. Stories that had a basis in reality but which were not true.

We've had to apologize to each other multiple times. We believed her! Why wouldn't you believe your mother. You are supposed to be able to believe your mother. I think we've gotten past that apologizing for not trusting that the other would know better, do better, act better -- but just past it. Now we've started to apologize for the hurt she's inflicted - the pain she's caused. The pain she can still cause.

Friendships

I didn't see the evidence of friendships growing up.

My Dad had no friends.

My Mom had friends, but as soon as a disagreement arose, they were gone. They were best friends and then they were no friends. I don't know how to describe the feeling of this, especially if they had a girl that was my friend.

Learning friendships as an adult has been terribly difficult. I've got them, but they've been few. They've been precious.

There is Rita. What would I have done without the Myers and Rita growing up. I can't imagine. How would I have made it through my teenaged years without having had the Myers's house as a refuge? Did they even know? I haven't talked to Rita in years, but I think of her so often. I need to try to find her.

There is Sharon. She was my first friend in Atlanta. Our children were best friends for years. We can pick up at the drop of a hat. It amazes me how God brought us together and keeps us bonded over the time periods that we miss.

There is Wendy. We talk daily. We talk about spiritual matters, educational matters, family matters. I can't think of anything that is out of bounds.

There are my friends at CBDS. Now this is amazing to me, because before I started working here, I counted my friends on one hand. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd ever have more than one or two friends at time. I'd never seen it modeled. I didn't think it could be done. I didn't know that a group of men and women could love and care for each other through Jesus Christ in friendship. Most especially, there are my precious, precious friends who have listened to my scarred past and hurts and have hugged me and cried with me and have loved me unconditionally.

Irony

September 7 I had a migraine that Imitrex didn't help, so I came home and went to bed. These migraines are exhausting. My face stays numb, my head continued to ache even when the migraine itself goes away.

So when Ron brought the mail in and said, you have a letter from your Mother, I asked him to read it - I just didn't have the strength myself.

I knew that eventually, the past would have to meet the present. I'd already been thinking about the things that would have to be addressed - a mental laundry list if you will, but the fact that I'd just written about letters and then one presented itself was almost too much to handle.


Then we get the letter. This one was scathing. She loved and trusted Daddy. Daddy had told her before he died to never trust Ron. She should not have let us move her out here. We moved her out here with dishonest intentions. Where did that come from? We did not move her out here. That was her decision. She would not even tell us when so that Ron could fly out and drive out with her like he offered. We do not come over enough, we do not do enough, we do not spend enough, we are not there enough. She is going to see a pastor at our church.

Is that last line a threat? It's hard to tell with the fantasy the letter is. Mother loved Daddy? She trusted him? Daddy didn't like or trust Ron? OH my goodness!

What would she like to see? Us not go on business trips? Ron not drive a company car? We tell her where we are going and why we are going and yet she still tells Ann that we never tell her anything or that it's been three weeks since we've seen her.

Then there's the part about us moving her out here. She announced to us that she wanted to move out to be near us so that she would be near someone in case she got sick again. She'd had pneumonia the winter before and was all alone and it scared her! I told several friends at work how uncomfortable I was with the idea.

This is typical of how she operates. Expectations that she has kept secret, but expects you to know. She dumps them on you ceremoniously and then expects life to go on as usual. Well it can't. How do you do that when she tells you that she doesn't trust the man you've adored for almost 30 years?

I'll go forward, but I won't be abused. That's one thing I've learned in 2007.

The messiest house in town

That would be our house. You really needed to see it to believe it. Mother always said it was Daddy's fault. Well eventually Daddy died and it was evident that it wasn't Daddy's fault.

We had stuff everywhere for as long as I can remember. It wasn't as bad when we were in El Paso, but there was still stuff. I remember a day when Mother entered my room and told me it was a pig sty. "What?" I thought. "How is my room different from everywhere else?" A that point I made a decision to be different - to be neat. I picked up every little thing angrily thinking that I would show her that should would never have to tell me to pick up anything again and she didn't.

In Houston, things were always messy. Ann made the comment recently that when company came, literally everything got shifted to Mother and Daddy's room. That was housekeeping. When they moved to Arkansas, things were so bad that you had to move stacks of things to have a place to sit or to eat at the table. When Daddy died, the floor was caked in dog hair.

Sometime near the end of last year, I asked a friend with experience in this field what that kind of housekeeping meant and she suggested undiagnosed depression. This could well be. Mother's been desperately unhappy for as long as I can remember. Daddy was a terrible disappointment. Most of her friends didn't live up to her expectations. Goodness knows Ann and I haven't, so it's entirely possible. Undiagnosed depression could explain some things.

Isolation

When I got in trouble, there was never a discussion. There was almost always a letter. I knew when I got home from school and there was a letter sitting on my bed that I'd done something that would let me know that had disappointed my again. It would tell me the infraction and the punishment which was usually some period of isolation in my room. We never talked about it.

I don't remember ever what I did. But I do remember the letters and how my heart sank with each one.

Preparing to Sell

I've been taking pictures of items to sell on eBay. I thought it would be hard. It's not been. I thought Ron might object -- even at first. He's not.

It's amazingly freeing to clean things up and package them in ways to sell - especially things associated with someone who has squeezed all the love out of your feelings and left them full of nothing but hurt and pain.

One thing this has brought back to haunt me though is one of the 13 characteristics that I suffer from dreadfully: Following a project through from beginning to end. I'm great at starting them. I'm full of plans, but it's hard to get past a certain point. I think it's fear.

I've got to do this though.

Cleaning House

I am literally cleaning house.

This is not just a mental exercise but a physical one as a well. Ron came home yesterday and said, "Oh my goodness." That surprised me because it's my phrase in this home.

Mother's given us lots of things over the years. Not new things, of course. Things that had been hers that she no longer wanted. Things that she had replaced with something new. I had them tucked away. I pulled them out. There were quite a few of them.

I started with an partial inventory, then I called Replacements.

Then I looked on Ebay.

Then I called Brenda. Again.

I think I'll stop by Barnes and Noble and get a book to take on the trip to this convention (another lavishly viewed trip, I'm sure) to read in the car. There were a good number of them on Amazon on how to sell things on Ebay. I bet I can find one at the book store that will teach me the ropes.

It's time to clean house.

Introvert or Extrovert

For years, I thought I was an introvert. Really! People who know me now are shocked to hear this. I was insecure. I was quiet. I did have bursts of occasional loudness, but they were few and far between. I was easily intimidated. On the Meyers-Briggs, I was a high I. I have the tests to prove it. I can pull them out for you.

The fact of the matter is that I'm not an introvert. I'm an extrovert and a fairly high one at that! Imagine what it took to squelch a social being, a communicator, the teacher who acts out columns, the one not afraid to go to the headmaster and say, "what?" into a wall flower, a child afraid to peep, with few friends.

When I say my memories began with Ron, I mean my very life began with Ron. He prodded me, he poked me, he pushed me. He made me realize that I am loved and I realized then that God probably really loved me too and that the commitment I'd made to Him years ago wasn't a sham like the life my family had always lived, but it could be real and sustaining like my life with Ron was. The two events are intertwined. Rededication and meeting Ron.

Slowly, this self-imposed shell fell away.