I just spent two days with my stepsisters, Jan and Pam. This is probably the most concentrated time we’ve had together since my mother married their father when I was nine. Jan was older, a teenager and a beauty queen — way out of my league. Pam was eight and we got along (we were both chubby at the time; I think that made us trust each other), but the only chance we had to bond was one fun Christmas Eve sleep-over the year our parents wed. After that, my stepfather was transferred to Spain and he and my mother moved to an Air Force base outside Madrid. I stayed in Kansas City, Missouri, with my dad, and they lived in Topeka, Kansas, with their mother. I went to Spain in the summers and I presume Pam and Jan did, too, but we were never there at the same time.
In adulthood, I saw Pam every few years for an evening or so (she lived in Florida where Mom and Bob, my stepdad, were), and once we all went to Las Vegas for three days. Pam was always the life of the party — like the 8-year-old that Christmas Eve — but we learned of each other’s lives through my mom’s letters and weren’t in much direct contact. Jan I almost never saw and when we spoke at her father’s funeral, I felt that rare and wonderful sense of genuinely appreciating someone’s energy, of knowing that this is a person I really, really like.
The three of us were together last week to tend to the bank stuff and the legal stuff and the putting-the-house-on-the-market stuff that I know can tear families apart. In our case, I think it’s bringing us together. I had such a great time with these women. After an afternoon of paperwork and whereas-es, we shopped at Dollar General and Beall’s Outlet Store. We got caught in the rain. We found old pictures of their family and my family and our family.
Now, I could be beating myself up for wasting decades, telling myself that I wasted the chance of having had two more friends at the very least, and maybe even two sisters. But I can do it now. The outlet store was as much fun three days ago as it would have been twenty years ago.
It’s a funny thing with kin, and even the non-DNA-sharing kin so prevalent in today’s world. It’s said, “You get to pick your friends, not your family,” and that’s true. But maybe God picks your family — nuclear, extended, blended, adopted, amended, and every other way family composes itself. And just maybe, God is a darned god picker.
Kansas City appearance: I’ll be speaking Tuesday evening, May 19, on “Victoria’s Victorious Bailout Plan” — lifestyle tweaks and spiritual ideas for thriving in these times and any time — for the Cornerstone Foundation, Unity Temple on the Plaza, 47th & Jefferson Sts., on the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, MO. Reception to follow. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Call Christine Garvey at 816-561-4466 to get yours. If the price is too steep, tell her I told you to ask about a scholarship or volunteering — she’ll get you in free or cheap.
Read Previous Post
More from Beliefnet and our partners