It was another of the endless chain of family parties, get togethers, those rare chances to exist freely in this world. Not everyone has a family that feels this way, I feel sad about that. Mine does. And I love it. Today was so much fun, somehow, someway, even with all that is wrong, wrong, truly deepply wrong.
My sisters and my parents grew up with me doing nothing other than drawing and extracting from my parents' minds how to spell this or that, how to say a word, what meant what, why were all these things happening, why was I five years old sitting on my hoppity horse imagining what I would be like at the age I would have been, and was, when the year turned from 1999 to 2000. I felt the sun coming down on me in the front yard as I sat that hoppity horse. I named him, I don't think I can really remember what I named him, which I should. That hoppity horse was more important to me than any doll could have been.
My older sister's daughter has cancer. I believe she is going to make it. My sister, at this fun birthday party today, repeated and reinforced to me what she has always voiced to me. She's never taken my chosen career to her heart. All she's ever wanted me to do was write. My older sister is a born musician. She never had a mirror held to her of her talent. My sister is also a jeweler, with the most efficient and discerning eye a person could have. Every time I see her, she makes sure we have the conversation about what she thinks I should really be doing.
I believe my older sister is the most intelligent woman. Probably, if you could compare her to anyone, I would imagine it be Emilia Earhart. I know knowing about Emilia Earhart other than her body has not been found. That will be my sister in her soul. No one will ever see her again once she goes. She's earned her freeedom.
My sister is insisting now that I write. It bothers her every day I don't.
She asked me if I would translate her narrations of what this time of having her daughter have cancer has been like into things written down. I committed to her I will.
She is far wiser than me. She's always, always wanted me to write. She knows that because I have agreed to create this book of a cancer mom's experience of losing it and regaining it, I will. She's taking care of her dreams for me as much as she is her daughter's, and even her own. She has never done that in her life.