Once again we are at the coast, avoiding the scorching heat of the valley. The worst of the heat should be done by the time we head home on Friday. The weather here is clear and mild, the sky a high, pale blue. Jays have been hopping around the camp pecking for food, making an awful squawk.  

It has been quite a while since I’ve written. The lingering pandemic has kept me in an equally lingering doldrum and, though I’ve started several posts, I have not finished anything I want to put in front of a reader. I begin but wander away from my intention. It is a bit like standing in the middle of a river, looking upstream and down, back and forward. Zen says that looking back leads to regret and looking forward leads to anxiety. Being here and now is what matters. I haven’t landed there yet. 

My sister and her husband came to visit us a few weeks ago. Given the pandemic and our reclusiveness, it was a big event.  Given our age, I think it was as much a matter seeing each other before it’s too late as a normal visit. My sister and I are only 10 months apart (I suspect my parents fell victim to the myth that nursing mothers cannot get pregnant) and are as close as two people can be without actually being twins. Or so I thought. As we reminisced, I began to realize that our recollections of our childhood differed considerably once we reached junior high. Our parents were not a very happy couple at about that time and my sister and I endured many late-night shouting matches and slamming doors.  This situation continued until we graduated from high school, at which point my parents reached some sort of détente and the fighting subsided to a constant nagging on my mother’s part while my father buried himself in his work. 

My sisters and I (by then we had a younger sister as well) never discussed the fights, though we could not help but be aware of them. We became the self-absorbed creatures that teenagers are. My best recollection of that time period is that our interactions were reduced to the mundane communications of people living in the same house, with the exception of my sister’s coaching about girls and dating. Socially and emotionally, we went our separate ways. 

Now, half a century later, we sat to reminisce and recall that prior life growing up in Wyoming, through the filter of marriages, children, grandchildren, and the deaths of our parents. We have seen each other in person less than a dozen times since our weddings. We are different people, not strangers certainly; the call of family is too strong for that, We are bonded by our childhood, those years we spent together learning our world. 

As we talked, sharing and correcting our recollections, I came to realized that my recall of the past was significantly different than hers. I was unaware of her unhappiness, her clashes with our mother. I had no knowledge of her distress, and I am unhappy about that. I should have been there for her. How was I so naïve and self-centered? 

Zen says that looking back is the path to regret and self- absorption, nothing can be done to change it. Looking forward leads to anxiety and distracts from the present. So, for a while, I’ve been standing still in the river, looking back at things I had not seen, trying to figure out how my understanding of our past together has changed. It’s been said that every new bend in the river changes the entire river, reveals a new course. I have a new perception of my sister and her strengths, her perseverance, and her faith, and who I once was. 

For two days we talked and recalled our life as we sat looking at the ocean. We shared meals. We reconnected. We became friends in a way we had not been for a very long time. 

I love you sis. 

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