a long thought....

i hear haunting celtic music drifting to me from the room next to mine
through a wall decorated in the vivid colors of childhood imagination

i recognise the sound as enya

the melody and the quality of sunlight filtered through the blinds here...the warmth and brightness of the day with the still distant threat of rain...the quality of this spring day in general...brings my baby sister to mind...

i miss her and think of her often

watching her grow up has been like watching the last spirit of youth board a vessel to the grey havens...never to return...it makes evrything about adulthood so....

final

the childish edge is gone from her laughter
her eyes are deeper
wizened
...no longer the impish blue grey i looked to ...to take me away from the heavy cares and woes of my forced adult life

she always occupied a place in my life ..my mind...my heart
that wa ethereal...untouchable...
and therefore ever untainted by the brutal world of reality

i hoped a life for her
where her imaginings...her spirit... would sustain her for always
would be printed ...illustrated...for the pleasure of those of us who lost the ability to live in her world long before our time

all of the hateful disappointment and cynicysm that ruined my mothers fairie spirit and my dreamers soul
i wanted my sister to thwart its every attempt ...to confine and tame it...turn it into something harmless

in all my hopes for her i was foolish

...i knew better than to believe in fairy tales...even as a child...
the realist in me knows that the benefit of life...of experience...no matter how grim or hurtful...will only serve to enhance people of her spiritual caliber

but it still kills the romantic in me who always childishly and vicariously lived in her unfaltering optimism...her belief in the goodness of the human soul

i suppose i just wanted her to live a life me and our other sister had been disallowed by circumstance or (as is my case)...poor decision...

i am the neurotic cynic

...though much less so in childhood i was always tragic...always untogether

rene was always so sick in childhood....and was dealt a bad hand concerning motherly love and affection...

i feel she remains of two minds

the silent dreamer on the soft inside...but on the outside has chosen to be the traditional mother and the prudent ..practical one....so that she could obtain and sustain the kind of family life we never had as children...

her very nature demands a sacrifice of the self and all self-interest...incidentally ...she had to forego her identity ...her dreams...and any healing of the psyche ...so that she could be what our mother was not

she and i both...were broken so early...it's scarcely comprehendable

i selfishly chose for many years to push family and motherhood to the back so that i could be me unhindered....i was so afraid i would lose myself like every other miserable woman i knew...

it was a robust but vain battle

what did i gain but a son who suffers because of me?
what did i gain but lost years and time with people i can no longer be with?

i am so bitter and selfish

...though i like to think i do better these days
...i missed so much that matters....

all the struggle and grief only to find that once i became a mother...
i did not lose myself after all...i was merely transformed...never to be the girl i once was ..,.but a new creation...deeper and more intensely human than ever...i knew love like never before...

once you become a wife....mother....or take on any of the many adult roles of women...you become a new creature....for good or ill....you can never go back...

but in dreams...
in memories...
in the hearts of those who knew you in childhood......

only here do you remain the same

timeless...
undiminished