Sisters

The link, it's still there. She wouldn't deny it, nor would I. I traveled beyond the world of perception and when I returned everything remained like it was before. I was different and that difference held a threat for her. I couldn't pretend. There were a few fantasies she preferred. Freedom without the fashion of ideal was too stark naked for her. Still, that link continues as life continues. I can play at fashion, it can be amusing at times. It makes her laugh and she forgets why she is afraid of me.

We've always had a strong family resemblance. We were often mistaken for twins when we were younger. She was very funny and people easily liked her. I was always a little too intense, silently questioning the set up, the proposed meaning of life. I was ahead of her in time and she was always trying to keep up. Now the wrinkles around my eyes and the graying hairs have caused me to wait for her. Time has done this to my body. I don't mind. I have enjoyed the silence of the wait and have learned to fill in the space between thoughts with artistic endeavors.

She has an acute memory of the past, of our childhood. To me, it was a dream I once had or a movie, a book I have read? I have traveled so far and so deep, too many children to remember who is my favorite. Our childhood is her neighborhood. Her innocence still lives there.

I left home after a riotous storm. It all came down to black and white. I left without telling her. I could be so detached at times. I told no one and I never wrote in those early days. Three thousand miles away I heard her voice so loud in my head that I thought she was walking by my side. "Call me," she said, "I miss you so." I was walking on the railroad tracks in the rain and jumped from beam to beam to get to a phone to call her. The link—she needs to hear from me. I do care. I called her. She answered the phone on the first ring and cried . . . "I knew it was you." I was amazed how our minds could touch and meet. I could always feel how she was doing after that. Even when she pretended otherwise; that's when I felt her the most.

Sisters, I have many. Sisters have a secret. It's so deep and powerful that it's never been adequately described and it's been fearfully hidden and underrated and undervalued. A mother and her child . . . even intimate sexual partners, don't share with each other what sisters share. Who do we talk with about our children and sex partners . . . our sisters. We do not share with our children or lovers the peanut and jelly of what really goes on between sisters. We are each other's hidden treasures and personal counselors.

When I became real, my sister thought she had lost me. She had lost her consolation in me. It wasn't meant to happen that I would actually get happy. We enjoyed each other's company with the hope one day our dreams would be fulfilled. To her reckoning, I ruined the whole plan when I woke up from the dream altogether and realized that the real was much more intriguing and satisfying than any dream I could come up with. One day she will forgive me for that . . . for actually becoming happy in the here and now . . . even though the world is still really fucked up, and our kids still get in trouble. She is wearing down on the dream scene. Either she has to get better dreams—kids and a man can't really fill women up . . . it takes a lot more than that—or declare her declaration of independence and act like a free woman from then on. Why is it that women have the strength to be there for their intimates but are terrified of standing alone? No credit where credit is due, I guess.

Everyone in my life before I became real complained that god was in the way of their relationship with me. Husbands said it, kids felt it and sisters puzzled over it. As children, my sister Deb, was more religious then I was. She actually wanted to be a nun. I never did. I didn't like all the ritual, or to be shut away or even praying very much. I saw god in a different way, always . . . even though I was taught that god was Jesus in heaven or some old man with a beard—god the father type image. I never saw god that way or felt god that way. I'd try to tell Deb about it. I'd say things like, god was alive, it's true . . . it's not a he or a she, rather a free flow . . . a bright happiness. My intuition of god didn't fit with the standard icons that society encouraged as truth . . . what could my sister make out of my "funny feelings" of free flowing energy? We played ball and she ignored them and I kept quiet about them.

My husbands had to tolerate my passion . . . that they were my secondary lovers . . . I was married twice and both woke up from a dream one night and gloomily proclaimed that they now understood why I was so weird; it was because I had this intense love affair going on with god, not them. My kids just felt it and they liked the feel of it. . . free flow was fun for them. My sisters, my sister Deb . . . well . . . I think it was harder for her to quietly resign herself to my spiritual flights. She was scared and jealous of my other out-of-this-world travels. She was scared that she wouldn't recognize me or understand me when I returned. And that did happen to me many times. She wanted our friendship to be there for her, not to take her way out there. I understand her fears and concerns now. If you got a wild card . . . I had to play it. She didn't go in for that high stake gambling. We play it down these days. I give her all the leads. God is definitely riding in the back seat. Deb rides shot gun with me . . . or she drives. I just don't let on anymore that the big grin in the rear view mirror is my own and she—She . . . god . . . feels so darn good.

The last time I visited her she showed me her family album. Glimpses of who we thought we were. The pictures of her kids growing, staged by body spurts. I laughed to myself . . . I'm finally old enough to enjoy and have a healthy curiosity about myself and her and how we tried to be together as we centered our lives around our husbands and children. We both knew that we would never do that again. We didn't have to prove we cared; just sitting examining picture after picture proved that and that . . . well, that we were so happy to not have those pictures' scenes come alive. We did not want to live those days again . . . even the best moments sprungboard us to this moment. This moment was our link—our true seeing—and we enjoyed the treasure contained in it.