I know I've said it before, but as far as you run, you can never outrun your genes.

A few evenings back I was sitting happily watching (read playing Darkthrone) tv and the phone rang. It was my older sister. She lives "back home" in the province and relative area to where we grew up. She married a local boy as did our two older sisters also married locally as did our brother Not me...I moved to Calgary and married a man from England. I've since divorced him. But for the eldest (her husband has passed) they're all still with their highschool sweethearts.

Suffice to say I'm the black sheep. The odd duck and the 'what is that kid thinking' element of our family. Doesn't mean I'm not one of them at heart.

The conversation started out in a normal way, a bit of joshing and goodnatured self dreprecation about our age and weight.

Me: "Hey, how are you?"

Sis: "Old and wrinkled."

Me: (laughing), "well you should have stuck with the family plan of fat, that way the skin's stretched out and the wrinkles don't show."

Sis: (also laughing) "Yes well I've plenty of both to go around."

We exchanged family news, catching each other up on the respective grandkids and children. The talk turned as it often does to who died, who wasn't dead yet and who had already died but I'd forgotten when she'd told me. Now to be totally fair, we aren't totally obsessed with death but the community -is- dying. The young'ns are escaping and not returning and that's sad for people like my sister and myself frankly, even though I can't believe I'll ever live there again. Not only that but she works in a funeral home as part of the catering staff (the woman makes one hell of a pyrogy let me tell you :P and her cabbage rolls are to well..die for ... even if they are her mom-in-law's recipe) so she does tend to mark time by funerals.

Sis: Nick B. died.

Me: (totally shocked the man was still alive) "Uh...wasn't he like 938 years old"

Sis: (laughing) Not quite.

Me: Truthfully, I thought he died years ago.

Sis: No that was ...

And the conversation turned to who was related to whom, and how Nick B. wasn't who I thought he was (he was I just truly did think he'd died years ago I wasn't mixing him up with another old man :P but it's fun to chat about who's who with my sis so away we went).

Somewhere in this long standing conversation (only the people we talk about shift generations or sometimes families) it takes one of those leaps that only do when people know each other well enough to let happen and just run with it.

Sis: S... were you ever in an accident? (somewhat startled tone as it had just leaped back into her mind, and also being the reason she'd called me).

Me: (knowing full well that she meant there and in the time we'd been discussing, a time when I'd been a young teen fool and she'd worried about me more than my own mom did...not because she cared more but because she was closer to my generation and what sort of stupidity teens were capable of). "Yes. I mean no not back then, but here in Alberta yes..." (see as much as I like to play with her mind, there's some things I won't twist about with her)

Sis: Well D. P. (who by the way would have been about oh...3 years old when this particular accident did occur)said you were in the car with B when that happened.

Me: (having a semi tempertantrum flashing back on the reason I wasn't in the car with B. who up until about 2 weeks prior to that had been my first boyfriend) NO. That was some bimbo with bigger boobs than mine and thanks for reminding me of that shithead.
(all said in a tone that she would know to be jokingly)

Sis: Well D.P. said. (dog with a bone, that's our family. We get an idea in our heads and it sticks, right or wrong).

Me: (pointing out the age difference between D.P. and myself ...frankly he's a little suck :P and a tattletale) (oh and we always call him D.P. to differentiate between him and our brother D.) I think I'd remember being in that accident. (it had been one where truly the three in the car had been extremely lucky ... they'd crossed a highway in front of a semi carrying logs to the local mill. It's a blind curve and they had a stop sign but they were also young, stupid and who knows possibly a little drunk although I can't honestly remember if they were or not, or if any charges were laid.)

Sis: Well that's what I thought but D.P. said you'd dated him. (Time you see, is relative to our family's need to connect events. Yes, I had dated the boy in question for the entire school year prior to that summer. And yes I was rather bitter that two days after playing "I Wouldn't Want to Lose Your Love" (by April Wine) to me on the phone this boy had taken another girl to the April Wine concert and had never called me again. Sure it was 30 + years ago but some wounds are easily torn open it would appear.)

Me: Thanks for reminding me of that. (the devil? he's got nothing on sardonic remarks around us).

Sis: You're welcome. (see? Not only do we have sardonic down cold but we own stock in sarcasm as well.)

We're goofy now and giggly, sharing things as we never did when we were younger. The age difference between us negligible now that we are both grandmothers. We see the world through the same glasses now, bifocals that let us see both near and far of the situation and with a little bit more patience and a lot more ability to let things be, instead of youthfully trying to mold the happenings in our lives to what we wanted rather than what was to be.

When I was a young adult (in age, at least if not in brain) she'd seemed impossibly old to me. Stuck in her ways and unbending in her beliefs. We fought a lot then. She wanted to mother me, to replace somehow the mom I'd lost at 16. I didn't begin to understand her reasons, why she couldn't be my sister and stop trying to boss me around. How I wish I'd taken a moment to think and realize how old she'd been when her own mother had died and the woman who was to become mine became a part of her life. We'd fight nearly every time we'd talk on the phone but to her credit she didn't stop trying. When I walked away from the family for nearly 5 years she held onto hope that I would return, looking for me now and again and crying with relief when I finally called home, alone, divorced, without my kids she never chastised beyond why ever didn't you call?

We fought a lot. Our conversations never ending without one or the both of us in tears. She wanted so badly to help me with my life. I wanted so desperately to be accepted for the decisions I was making. Finally one day I realized, actually had what amounted to an epiphany :) that I didn't have to fight so hard to be accepted for them, I simply had to believe in them. I stopped defending them to her. When she'd challenge me on something I'd decided, I'd remark on the weather. And to her credit she took the hint. Our conversations became tolerable, then even pleasant. Now I look forward to enjoying a good yak with her about who died.

I guess this post could also have been entitled, "time heals all wounds" but really it's not just time. sometimes it's a remark about the weather that does it.