My sister was in town last week...we had a visit...

As most of y'all know by now, my sister and I don't have the best of relationships.

To put it in a term, we don't have a relationship. We haven't spoken much to one another in many years. There's been a bunch of Bad Things that have transpired over the years to make communication between the two of us difficult, if not impossible.

It doesn't help that there's about 13 years age difference between us and that we're two very different personalities. Strangely, our birth signs--she's a Virgo and I'm an Aquarius--occur opposite one another in the zodiac. This juxtaposition means we regard one another as aliens and question each other's worldviews and values systems.

I doubt there are two people who could be more opposite.

When she emailed me and told me she was in town for a seminar and wanted to get together for dinner, I didn't think much of it. Anticipating another person's motives for whatever action is often times time consuming if not also quite futile.

In other words, I really didn't care what she wanted to talk about. I was just surprised she wanted to talk at all.

So, I picked her up at her hotel and we went down to the Longhorn for dinner. It was about 4pm--the Longhorn was the best place I could think of.

We got to talking about this and that. I was open to the situation. Maybe it was because I had a cold and was coming off of the high of the combined festival and symposium. I was feeling a sense of accomplsihment, and my self-esteem was pretty good, so it really didn't matter what she thought of me.

We seemed to be able to find a middle ground--a place where we could put aside being siblings and be the two adult women we actually are. We're not kids any more and any of those old resentments need to go out the window. Maybe they did when Mom died. I don't know.

Dad came up--of course. The bain of both our existences these days. He's turning into what could be called a Nasty Old Bastard. We talked about the inappropriate things he says to us. I told her how Steady Eddie observed that he spoke to me more like a war buddy than like a daughter, and how I had to smack him down with doses of his own medicine to get him to knock it off. She told me how he shows up at the house drunk, how he calls the minute she gets in the door from work, and other harassing and controlling things.

He was like this before, esp. with money. But Mom was the buffer. Sometimes.

I mentioned that I knew he was massively resentful towards me for getting an education, and he often used offers of money to try to manipulate me to do what he wants. And that everytime I did what he wanted, my life went the way of Total Disaster.

She knew.

Then she brought up the house. She brough it up very matter of factly, "you know, Dad didn't buy that house. We made money on the other house and put it into this one. I don't know why he's saying that we're just renting it from him. We own it."

I had no reason to doubt her. What would she have to gain from telling me this?

She said he told her that I was always begging him for money.

I told her no, that wasn't the case. I told her that I was sick and tired of him always saying how he bought her the house, and I felt that I was being slapped in the face for being the Bad Daughter who got herself a fancy and useless education.

Heaven forbid one of his own children achieve anything in this world and not be dependent on him.

I told her how the first thing out of his mouth last time I called was "so, are you on welfare yet?" Then he launched into another soliloqy about the house, and I asked him to buy me a laptop. I felt it was only fair. In some way.

She told me that the last time he came over, the first thing he said to her was "so, looks like you might need to go on that Relacore stuff, you're getting fatter." and then mentioned how he'd gone to the Roma fortune teller down the road who said my Godmother's grandsons were giving him the Evil Eye.

I just about gave myself the V-8 smack to the head over that one. "He's such an ass," we agreed.

What a thing to have to say about your own Dad.

We also talked at length about his problem with women, and his self-perception difficulties. He can't seem to get that he's 80, not 21.

I wonder what sort of mental condition causes that--causes a person to resent his own children's successes, causes him to lie and manipulate, causes him to not see that he's elderly. He must look in the mirror and see a young man the way I sometimes seem myself as a size 8. But I think his problems are alot worse than my small, often easily corrected, self-deceptions. It's not enough to just say he's a Nasty Old Bastard--there has to be some cause, some identifiable condition.

A friend of mine likes to say that I have love of labels. And it's true. If I can give a pathology a diagnosis, I can understand it. If I can understand it in rational, psychotherapeutic terms, I can forgive it.

I can't forgive Nasty Old Bastardness. As I see it, that's an intractable condition. More than a human failing, it's a reason to not forgive because it will never, ever go away and has no real reason other than self-centered stupidity for being there.

I'm sick and tired of the whole thing, which may be why I wasn't all that resistant to what she had to say. I wasn't going to fight about any of it. I know what he's like, and I know what he's about. I know how much he resents that I have an education...and it wouldn't surprise me if he was lying about the house to make himself look like the big man to me.

I know he doesn't see either my sister nor myself as his daughters. He sees us as Women. He is disconnected as Father. I know this. Don't ask me how. I can't talk about it.

So, it is what it is. Uncomfortable as it is.

My sister called me the next day to tell me she was leaving. I wasn't home. I called her back and told her that I hoped she had a good trip home.

I haven't heard from her since. I don't know if I will again. But at least I'm at peace with it. I hope she is, too.