Sisters: When We’re All Grown Up
My sister turned 65 last week. I forgot to call. I have an excuse . . . well, sort of. I was in Mexico enjoying the sun on the terrace. My mind had turned into mush.
So, I was a day late.
But my sister was gracious and accepted my apologies. I guess forgiveness comes with age. (And, Lord knows, we need something good to come with getting old.) Besides, she’d had a great birthday much like a progressive dinner with a gaggle of guests arriving throughout the day and evening. I’ve rationalized that she was having too much fun to answer the phone. My sister is like that: she doesn’t have call waiting, only recently bit the bullet and bought a cell phone, and may have a Facebook account that she never uses. (That means she’ll never read this post.)
I bought my sister a multi-colored Mexican bolsa that I mailed off today. She may or may not use it. She’s not the purse-carrying kind, but this will look great with jeans and a sweatshirt. (I should mention that my farm gal sister loves to visit me and hit every boutique in town. Last time, she bought at least one item from each store. Mini-skirts, tight-fitting tops, a funky pair of blue tennis shoes that I coveted as well. Sadly, there was only one size 7.5 left, and I was zen enough to let her have them.)
In all fairness, I should acknowledge that she somehow landed the same shoes online and sent them to me for my birthday. Now I’m really feeling guilty.
Still, my sister is more like me than any other human on the planet. We share 50% of our genes, the same parents, the same two brothers, life under the same roof, the same extended family, the same sorrow of losing a brother much too early and then losing both parents much too close to one another. We hadn’t had time to process our mother’s death and, less than a month later, our father passed away. (Oh, did I mention that we share the same shoe size? I wish I could say the same for our dress size, but that’s a story for another post. Maybe.)
Now, we share something else: we are both card-carrying Medicare recipients. I LOVE Medicare! I love the coverage, the ease of use and now, at tax time, the end-of-the-year out-of-pocket prescription and medical summaries that take the burden off of having to tally up all the disparate bills spilling out of the designated folder and then having to do some creative math to present the IRS with the stats that Medicare spits out right into my tax preparation workbook.
Whoever said the U.S. government can’t get its act together?
So, my little sister, a belated happy 65th. You are now officially a senior citizen. Where did the time go? How did you catch up?