Endless Shrimp Reunion

Yesterday we meet with my sister and her husband. It had been since 1997 since we've seen each other. Last weekend we had planned to get together, but since I was barfing and freaking out with a fever, I had to cancel.

Can you believe I forgot to bring with me the birthday gift I bought? I had told myself over and over not to forget, and I just don't listen to myself!

Well, she didn't forget to bring the get-well/birthday gift that she got for me. How thrilled I was to find she had gotten me more pieces to the Hues N' Brews Cattitude collection! I had just informed Pooky with the holidays upon us that he'd have to get me more from the collection, this time in pink or purple.

Pooky had been wanting to go to Red Lobster for the Endless Shrimp meal, and I needed to go too, since I first saw the commercial while in the hospital and developed a shrimp scampi need.

My sister agreed to joining us as who can refuse endless shrimp unless you have a seafood allergy?

We sat for three hours eating and talking, talking and eating. We shared cat stories, humorous experiences, and for a bit Pooky and my BIL talked about life in the Navy. Both had spent some time in the Norfolk area.

After eating way too much coconut shrimp and greasy, garlic-y scampi, I gave up, and managed to eat most of a slice of kep lime pie. Everyone else continued to get more shrimp and skipped the dessert.

I have to pinch myself. For so long I told myself that I'd never see my sister again, 'cause I said some really awful things to her, and ever since I said them, I regretted saying them, but once you've done something like that you can't take it back. I think at the time I was so mad at her that I wanted to say nasty things to her, so I did.

Now I realize that saying nasty things gets you nowhere. But in looking at the word nowhere, you can divide it to read: now here. I'm here—now—and we've meet and we've talked, and all I can think is maybe it took me having to loose a couple feet of bowel, being in horrible pain, and maybe being knocked off track with school and my education to be "now here".

If the price to pay was some pain and my bowel in order for me to see my sister again, then it has been worth it all. And in the bargain I've gotten to see my dad and talked to my older brother. I thought these things wouldn't happen, but at the same time I kept hoping so very hard that it would.

Along with the price of my health, my relationship with my mother is strained, but that is nothing new. I can no longer stay silent around her when I feel the need to say something, so if she is going to get upset and bellow, that is her way. For too long I've said nothing letting her believe that the way that she feels is the way that I feel. It isn't being honest with her. It isn't being true to myself, either.

It has worked out perfectly too that she has said she will never bring up the subject of my siblings. She was putting me in an uncomfortable spot at times, and I didn't want to go there with her. I had told her that I would not be discussing them with her at all prior to our little disagreement from last week. Yet, she had to bring out the old ghosts and goblins anyhow.

I'm feeling the sense of newness and excitement with reuniting with my sister. Even though it felt like we picked up where we left off when our relationship was good, I feel like I don't really know her since so much time has passed. Is she still how I knew her? There is stuff about me, too, that is different, and new.

Where do we go from here? That's exciting. We can go anywhere we want! The possibilities are endless!

I value her too much to mess things up. Being deprived of that side of my family made me realize just how much I missed it. I can't think about my childhood anymore without feeling a sense of loss, of yearning to be back in time when I was a kid, before my mother got the itch to divorce my dad. There was a time in there when things were pretty good, and if I could go back in time and be there for a minute or two and say to everyone how much it has hurt to be divided, to be torn apart—would my mother and father listen to what I would have to say?

But we can't rewrite the past. We can only write the future. As it unfurls before us...we bring with us to the present so much that clouds our judgment. If only we could live free of the pain of the past, live entirely new and open to what is to come...Then we'd live every moment to its fullest.