SISTERS

As I near fifty I find myself with sisters. I am the youngest of four older brothers and there was never a moment that I thought I was missing a sister, a female confidante. 

Now I feel as though the arms of my sisters will keep me alive. I seek out female voices and experience, mothering, and wisdom. Perhaps deliciously I find solace in knowing that in some way I have a small army of people, based solely on gender, that are on 'my side' through all of this. I need women in my life and I feel as though perhaps I have been asleep somehow for not having needed or noticed sisters before. For the first time in my life, sisters make sense to me and I find myself eyeballing men with utter confusion; sometimes, with eyeballs raised to heaven, rocking back and forth.

Freda, whom I have known all my life often feels like a lung, the one that takes in oxygen when me, the other . She calls me almost daily to make sure I am alive. She has struggled right along side me as I gasp for air, and flail about. I find myself sulking or white knuckling the days when she tells me she will be away from the phone for a few days. 

I am most likely going to state the obvious, to all except me, but I think what they are providing is in some ways similar to a craving.  My instinct tell me that the answer to my problem is not another man. Further, I am sure that our physical similarities guarantee something. I am not sure what at the moment. But I feel sure that the abuse I have felt is known by other women. The snippets of wisdom come in many forms. It is D that invites me to her home and drives aimlessly around New Jersey and then walks me through a botanical garden. It is M that sends me an email that contains her feelings concerning the loss of her own husband years before that is exactly the same way I feel about the loss of my husband today. She equates the loss of her husband as a type of death of self.  In the e-mail she adds another bit of information that somehow startles me. She writes: don't do things for men-- don't help them. Thinking of my own brothers I want to immediately dismiss this advice but then I ponder and realize that I did nothing but help my husband and that does not a relationship make. She was not saying, if he drops his hat don't pick it up, but rather: don't help him do big fat gigantic things that he should be doing for himself. 

I run this 'don't help them' concept by Freda and she adamantly agrees and I am shocked. She seems to know this secret of sisterhood that I had not. She goes on to say that once she helped her husband of 33 years and that never again would she go down that road. I am perplexed that one can love and be together for so many years and yet hold this point of view. It is a new concept to me and one that I feel I had better remember and learn wisely from. It feels like if I don't learn this jewel I will somehow morph into something that resembles Amy Winehouse on my insides: withered, frightened, and desperate.

I mustn't forget the three sister, older than myself, that I unburdened myself to when I thought I would implode. M, D and G. They have known me since my mid 20's and I had not seen them in years. An afternoon with them resulted in 100 lbs being lifted from my shoulders. It also resulted in a job. That fact has humbled me in a profound way. It makes me feel responsible to those that share the planet with me in a whole new way. It makes me think of mentorship and kindness as a fundamental responsibility of all people living in this world.

I am blessed. I am lucky. I am guided from outside myself. I have found some sisters of mercy.