This retreat was mostly about
visiting and eating. Okay, so all our
retreats are mostly about visiting and eating. Mom is gone, but her kitchen is
as familiar as ever. The cast iron frying pans still reside on the stove top or
in the oven, the potatoes are under the sink, the cereal and crackers around the corner. We work
together to create meals and then clean up in a jiffy. It all comes back -
visiting over the same sink, stepping over each other to dry dishes, wiping
off counters and carrying scraps outside to dump over the fence into Wally’s
alfalfa field.
Three of us are on ranches, one
in the recycling business, one in real estate and one a nurse. We’ve waited
tables, counted money, doctored animals and people, nurtured children and
sailed oceans. We’ve managed employees, given up on marriages, stuck with
marriages, and welcomed grandchildren. We’ve all had disappointments and
triumphs.
During our three day stay, and
following a recent death in our extended family, we spent some time sorting and
cleaning a now vacant house. One evening we thumbed through the contents of a
long forgotten trunk, a heartbreaking look into the life of a girl who died at seventeen in the 1940s. Here were her school papers, her baby book, even the newspaper
write up of the tragic accident that took her life. She was our dad's cousin and no one is left to tell her story. Not knowing what to do with the
contents, we laid the items back and closed the lid. We stepped outside as dark
descended. The yard is wild and expansive and the butter-colored primroses were
opening for their one-night stand. One by one they blossomed in perfect form, shouldering
aside the spent and shriveled blooms that were new only last night.
As we sisters age and watch our parents
fade, we cling to each other. I just finished reading a book, About My Sisters, by Debra Ginsberg.
These siblings were very different from us, loud and argumentative, with only one child and
no marriages between the four of them. But the author spoke for us when she
said, “each one of us carries some part of her sisters with her. I can’t
imagine my life without any one of them. Nor do I want to try.”
Beautiful. Love the third paragraph.
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