Relationships of Life

I've always envied people who say that their sisters are their best friends.  Sometimes, though, you just want them to be sisters.

Since I was the middle child I was born a sister, which I still am.  My parents may have died at relatively young ages, but my sister and brother are alive and kicking and so I remain sister to two very different people.  My relationship with my sister (5 years my senior) has been rocky from the start.  She is moody and ungrounded; she never married and that has created a certain amount of bitterness.  We were never close but she lives an hour away from me (as opposed to my brother who lives in a different country) and so we have an ongoing relationship now that is better than I ever would have imagined.  She always believed that my brother and I had it out for her and I guess when we were younger we did (our inside jokes drove her nuts).  My brother (2 years my junior) and I have the same sense of humor - very, very dry - and certain things that my sister did (and still does) drove us both crazy in the same way.  But he is in NY and my sister and I both live in Israel.  I am the only family she has here and that changes things immeasurably.  I don't share much about my feelings with her (some things never change) but she talks to me about her own relationships - with men, with peers, with friends - and I guess we have become friends of sorts.  She is still annoying and moody and her questionable judgment hampers her in many ways but she's my only sister and I think that, at least partially, I am finally fulfilling the role of sister, as well.  It's never too late, I guess.

How we relate to our parents can have in impact on our entire lives.  Fathers and daughters, in particular, have complicated relationships.

 The first relationship we have is with our parents; talk about loaded.  I think it's fair to say that our relationship with our parents can shape us for the rest of our lives.  I look back at my relationship with my father - who died at the age of 60, when I was only 22 (30 years ago) - as a blur.  I grew up in the 1960s and he was the classic father who came home at 8:00 at night and left in the morning before I was up.  I remember bits and pieces of things that we did together, along with my brother and sister, but I don't remember the emotional connection.  Either I was too young when he died or we both held back or my memory is faulty; in any case, I can't conjure up the emotional bond we may have had, and I'm sure there must have been something.  We spent many Sundays together, my father and I.  My mother went back to school when I was 8 years old and she used Sundays to study (for her degree in social work).  It was my Father's "job" to keep us out of her hair and I remember weekly trips to Coney Island, the Staten Island ferry, the Statue of Liberty, the circus, the zoo, the park, the playground.  All the memories I have of recreation and fun are occupied by my father.  I don't remember him necessarily having a good time but I know that we did.  Once, when my mom was drawing close to the end of her course work and she had to finish her thesis, my father took my brother, sister and me to Florida to visit his sister, our Aunt Rose, for a week.   I remember playing with my brother in orange groves and posing with my sister in front of a statue of a dolphin at the Seaquarium but I don't remember my father's presence.  This absence of a connection - as opposed to an existence of a specific problem or issue - is what bothers me to this day.  Something was missing from the equation and I don't know what it was.