Waiting for the New Year

As the year draws to a close, I have a confession to make. 

            My biggest problem is that I am perfect.  Seriously, deep down, I seldom see my actions as anything other than exactly what is called for.   Everything about me is perfect, I read the right books, love the best music, and have a long and entertaining history of life choices.  Most people go into analysis to cure their faults.  If I went I would be at a loss to define any faults.  What would I say; help me, I’m perfect?

            It will come as no surprise to hear that my opinion is not shared by those who know me.  My husband used to say that I suffered from delusions of grandeur and he was only half kidding.  My daughter would tell you I obsess about clutter and hang my clothes by color.  Those people I used to work with would tell you I was driven, nose to the grindstone and always ahead of the game, sadly, not always the right game.  Friends would say I am great at trivia but not so great at remembering birthdays.  I will admit this last observation is true.  I have one of those trick memories that stores every work I have ever read, every song I have ever heard.  How many people do you know that can tell you who played the Humpty Dumpty in the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland?  Give up?  W.C. Fields.  Why do I know this?  I never saw the movie, the information is just there, in my perfect memory.

            It’s hard to be perfect, always making allowances for those less gifted, trying to be open minded and engaging when deep down I sometimes feel like I am living in an alternate universe where I am the only one who knows what is going on.  I once spent an entire summer trying to develop faults, trying to modify my character to something less assuming, less inverted with no luck.  I just ended up with a bad case of insomnia and not a clue about anything else.

            The more I think about this, the more I think we all see ourselves as perfect.  We might say, for discussions sake, I ate too much, read the wrong books, nag when I should keep my mouth shut but deep down, inside where the ‘I' of us is most secure, do we really believe we have imperfections or do we think it is the way we are perceived that is in error?  Maybe we are all perfect; we are just not admitting it.

 

No Earthly Reason

When I started this blog, it was my intention to post every day, then every week, well maybe once a month and it has finally boiled down to this.  I post when something, good or bad, really draws my attention.  Today a really bad news item has me thinking about my ‘fellow’ man as in “What a piece of work is man.”.

A local seventy four year old widow had her only means of transporting her adult mentally challenged son stolen.  The item was a seven year old van equipped with a motorized lift.  The son is also physically handicapped and cannot get in and out of a vehicle by himself.  His mother cannot lift him into a vehicle.  This act and its aftermath is so disturbing on so many levels, that I hardly know where to start.

Why would anyone steal a seven year old vehicle unless it was just a malicious act?  Why is the widow’s insurance company unable to supply a lift along with the replacement vehicle they provided while police search for her van?  My guess is, lifts are not covered, we don’t care if you starve to death because you can’t leave your son alone and you can’t take him out.  Why does a local van dealer stop by to suggest that entering a contest to win a new van in August is the answer?  I live in a large metropolitan area and I would think, if nothing else, perhaps the city could release one of those impounded vans we are always reading about, as in city collects exorbitant fees for operation of abandoned and impounded car storage, fit it with a lift and help the lady out.

I hope that as the days pass,  I will read that this womans van has been found or replaced.  Right now, I am feeling less than charitable towards whoever disabled this womans life.

What you see...

I was four when I met my step sister.  She was sixteen and movie star beautiful.  The year was 1946.  My father, a wonderful mystery to me, had just returned from Germany.  The war was over.  My step sister came to live with us as a result of her own war with my paternal grandmother who raised her.  For this account, I will call her Lily but that is not her real name.  Lily was very good at getting what she wanted and what she wanted was everything.

Lily and my mother did not get along, but my father wanted us to bond so he let Lily take me everywhere, to the skating rink, to the park, even to secret meetings with her current boyfriends.  I was thrilled that someone so beautiful could be my sister,

Our town was too small to keep Lily for long and soon she disappeared in the middle of the night.  My father was hurt, my mother was relieved, and I was heartbroken.

Fast forward to the year 1961.  Lily returned, still beautiful, now divorced and leading a parade of would be suitors around our town.  She became my sister again, this time trying to drag me into her world which revolved around jazz, great clothes, bourbon and good times. She was what gossips meant when they said a woman was ‘fast’.  I was shy, nearsighted, and definitely not beautiful so I basked in her light and loved her again.

 

Within a few months she had managed to marry into a wealthy family with the bonus of owning a liquor store.  This marriage lasted twelve years and ended when she fell in love with someone else, who had even more money.  Along the way, she had one son who grew up to be just as good looking and charismatic as his mother.

I married in 1962 and left my town.  I divorced in 1972 and moved again.  In 1973, I meant the man I would spend the rest of my life with.

In 1981, my father died and I went home for the funeral.  I had not seen or heard from Lily for almost twenty years. She was still the larger than life person I remembered, trying to take over the funeral plans and position herself in the center of attention as if my father were only her father.  Yet, I could not help but wish for some of her glamour; she always managed to look casual and perfect at the same time.  What was I thinking, to even consider this at such a time?  Seeing her just reminded me that in my mind, I was not attractive or desirable

After my father died, I received the occasional card but we never got together, even when I was within sixty miles of her.

 

I last saw her at my mother’s funeral in 2001.  She was seventy one and looked sixty.  She was full of stories about her successes, her possessions, her adventures.

 

She died on December 31, 2011.  Now I write this and realize that I had a sister, my father’s daughter, just like me, but I never really knew her.  I remember and knew illusions.  I am sad to think that I never tried to break that artificial shell she had because that was the very thing that made her so attractive.  I am sad to know that all my chances to really know the person that was Lily are gone.