Extrafamily matters

[aadler]

I have sisters.

It’s not something I’ve ever talked about, because it’s not something that figures prominently in my life. It’s there, it’s a fact, it’s in the background and doesn’t affect much of what’s going on day-to-day. And it falls into different categories.

First category.

My mother was an extravagant personality. Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter said that he “always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.” That was my mother: wherever she was, that was where the spotlight had to be, and if it didn’t happen naturally (which it usually did), she’d make it happen (which she invariably could). She surrounded herself with people, involved herself in their lives, brought them into ours. We lived in a three-story Victorian house in a medium-small town, and it seemed there was always somebody staying with us in one or another of the spare rooms. She casually referred to these people as her children (and, eventually, their progeny as her grandchildren).

That annoyed me. Not out of jealousy, I just disliked the seeming attitude that something could be made so simply by saying it was so. To my mind, they weren’t her children because they weren’t her children, simple as that. Whatever place they had in her life, however close they were to her, it was what it was … but what it wasn’t was that they were her children, because that was not in fact true. This was not a major problem, just a trivial — even momentary — irritation, but I was unquestionably irritated by it.

Second category.

In an extension of the above, a few years after my father died my mother formally, officially adopted one of her later protegées. I don’t know why, because this wasn’t anything she’d ever done before or ever did again, and I couldn’t see anything to suggest she was particularly closer to this young woman than she’d been to anyone preceding her. It was a fact, though, and I recognized it as a fact. The woman in question married, divorced, remarried, divorced again, and eventually disappeared under circumstances that led us to believe there was a significant possibly that she’d been murdered. Later developments seemed to indicate otherwise, but I never got around to confirming one way or another because I didn’t care. Again, I didn’t resent or dislike this woman, I just didn’t care. It was something my mother had done, and my attitude at the time was, “Oh. Okay. … Any good movies showing this week?” Simply irrelevant to my life.

Third category.

Years after that, my mother herself remarried, to a man with three semi-grown daughters. So, just like that I had stepsisters. Again, this was a fact that I accepted without resentment or rebellion. The three girls actually had a bit to do with my life, in that they were part of a household where I no longer lived but regularly visited. All three are, of course, now grown and with kids of their own, and — so far as I know — living in three different states.

***

I said all that so I could say this.

Brenda, the woman my mother adopted? Sister by law, but I never regarded her as such. I just didn’t feel it, not then and not now.

The three stepsisters? I never really thought of Jenna (the youngest) as my sister, because I had the least to do with her and I just plain don’t think of her at all. Julia, the oldest one, regarded me as a brother and I accept and reciprocate the feeling; we’re not close, but maintain semi-regular contact and are on good terms. Cherilynne, the middle daughter … ironically, she lives closest to me (maybe 30 miles, assuming she didn’t move without me finding out), but we haven’t had anything to do with each other in more than a decade; and I think of her as explicitly not a sister — without hostility, but I’m emphatic about it — due simply to the way we dealt with each other when we had occasion to deal with each other to any extent.

On the other hand, Janie (oldest of my mother’s self-designated ‘kids’ from fifty years ago) maintains regular contact with me and my brothers, calls me her brother, and I do think of her as a sister. The one with no official status is the one most prominent in my mind as possessing said status. (Actually, she’s just about level with Julia in that, but more pro-active and thus more frequent.) And now she wants to set up a time next summer when my brothers and I and our respective spouses can go up and visit with her in Minnesota. And I’ll probably do what I can to bring it about.

The granting of a particular status to someone, due to feeling in contradiction of fact, that I rejected (for this same person!) when my mother did it? That’s what I’m doing now.

What the hell. Life is funny.