I am grateful for many things that enrich and bless my life each day. At the top of that list is family. I feel so fortunate to have family members whom I love and enjoy connecting with as often as I can. Two years ago when I relocated across the country from California to Maryland, I moved to within a 20-minute drive from each of my three sisters. It was the first time in over 30 years that I’d lived in the same place as one of my sisters, and the first time in in over 45 years since I’d lived in the same town as all three of them. This has been a really wonderful thing.
Today represented a wonderful reminder of just how nice it is to be in regular contact with well-loved siblings. This morning, one of my older sisters called me. “Did I wake you?” she asked, though appeared to be relatively certain that she hadn’t or relatively unconcerned if she had. I assured her that she had not and proceeded to chat with her as she took a morning walk in her neighborhood while I finished my coffee. It was a scenario we’ve repeated many times over the years. She walks and talks and I sit and listen, offering occasional commentary, advice, and when needed, comfort and reassurance. When she is struggling with a particular issue, she knows she has a listening ear and a solid shoulder and some reasonably good perspective and advice.
It is what we do for one another, my sisters and I. We have each other’s backs. It is a blessing and a gift and I do not take it for granted. I chatted with that sister for a while, before hanging up and preparing to get on with my day. Somewhere over the next little while after I’d hung up, I dropped back into the mild mental funk I’d been in earlier in the morning. It’s not unusual for me to have a bit of a letdown on the weekend, particularly if it’s been a challenging week. I have a lot of things on my plate, at work and at home–a lot of moving parts, options to evaluate, decisions to make. It’s enough to make anyone a little cranky.
As I began to sink into the funk, my younger sister called me to check in and see what I was up to. As I grumbled about the various struggles I was facing, she listened patiently and calmly, offering a variety of helpful suggestions and advice. “Are you writing this down?” she asked after she’d outlined a string of ideas. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to remember these pearls of wisdom, so you’d better get them down.” That made me smile, and I did get a piece of paper and write some of it down, though I doubt I captured every pearl that dripped from her lips. Alas. By the end of the conversation I was feeling a bit better and was able to get on with the rest of my day. It wasn’t my most productive day ever, but it was a decent one nonetheless, made that much better by bookend conversations with two of my sisters. It’s past time for me to reconnect with my oldest sister and my two brothers. I’ll get on that in the near future.
I am grateful for all of my siblings, those with whom I interact with regularly and those with whom I check in periodically. It’s not about the frequency of the connection, it’s about the strength of it. The ties that bind us are stronger than we may even know. As I was pondering it the other day I realized that I am part of a tightly woven network of support that connects and protects the various members of my family. That extends out to my twelve nieces and nephews and even my great nephew. It means that I will reach out to and defend and aid as best I can any of my siblings and their families, and vice versa. Even when I have struggled, whether financially, emotionally, or mentally, I have always known that I have people I can fall back on, who have my back no matter what. At the end of the day we are connected by more than blood, but by heart and spirit through love. It really doesn’t get much better than that.
