Cultivateyourlife’s Weblog

The personal history that my sister and I share is rich with fodder for a dysfunctional relationship. It’s been rife with opportunities to love, hate and misunderstand each other. I’m not placing blame when I say that our home was filled with frightening uncertainty that had a lasting imprint on my own personal narrative as well as that of my sister. I can’t speak for her, but I can tell you what my experience was. This is the personal account of the birth of a self-righteous position.

I was born in 1955 to a World War II US Navy veteran and a strikingly beautiful and intelligent woman. I was the second, last and not planned for child. My mom doesn’t think I know, but I was the surprise. My sister had been born just a little over seven years earlier and she was destined to be an only child. Mother was of frail health and was under doctors orders not to have any other children. By looking at the old family photos, it becomes almost painfully obvious that my arrival was not on anyone’s radar. The photos tell the story that my sister was a doted on child who was given all the attention and love my parents, aunt, uncle and grandparents could offer her. The years before my birth were golden. With hindsight, I can say that I am happy she shared in the golden days of my parent’s Camelot. The years ahead would not prove to be happy ones.

By the time of my birth, my paternal grandmother, for whom I would be named, had suffered a massive and fatal coronary attack as she waited in the car for my grandfather to close his barbershop. My mother’s health had been further compromised and my father’s alcoholism was becoming apparent along with its catastrophic consequences.

Still, my birth was, by all accounts, uneventful. I was wrapped in swaddling blankets and brought home, a new life to celebrate in the wake of such a loss, the sudden and disappointing death of my grandmother. The few photographs of the days surrounding my birth were taken with a Polaroid, clear evidence of the classical post WWII, abundant lifestyle to which I was born. I was precious, they looked happy, my sister looked concerned.

In 1960, I began my first year of school, kindergarten. My first memories begin at about the same time.  They appear to me as fragments, bits and pieces that don’t always make sense. The substance of dreams, flashes of recall when the world and everything in it was huge and I was not. I was not.

Somewhere in between the time I was born and the time that my brain began to record retrievable memory, I already knew that my survival depended on my sister. I knew at some very basal and organic place within me that she was my protector and savior.

This is the moment that the seed of my self righteous position was planted. It germinated and then thrived as a growing dependency on my sister for my survival. In a world in which I was dwarfed by alcoholism, combat flashbacks, serious family illness that took my mother from the home and deeper family dynamics that cannot be expressed now, I understood well, instinctively that my survival depended upon a 12 year old.  Her approval of me meant my life. I did whatever it took to ensure I was on her good side,did what she asked to remain under the protection of her good humor.

I’ve only recently come to understand the life-long impact this conclusion would have on both of us separately and together.

That will be the subject of part III.