I M Perfect lady

My husband and I arrive at a local Art’s Festival, we have one hour before the Artists close shop, the weather is breaking, it seems the sun will peek out, I am excited to see what is underneath each tent.

We make a right to glimpse at the first booth we happen upon, and standing there is my sister dressed in Harley clothes, her cop husband right behind her, I pause a second and my hand reaches out to tap her shoulder.  “Hey, is this my sister?”….she turns, smiles and reaches to hug me.  We embrace.

I played in my head a myriad of ways this would all go down, and I was pretty close on target.

Her and I have not spoken nor seen each other in 2 years.

To find her in the midst of Art Festival seems almost appropriate, for I was looking for things that would catch my attention.

Her back was to me, so I could have walked around her, and maybe if my husband weren’t there, I would have.  I felt like hiding and then instead moved forward to engage, I was most shocked by that.

Our conversation was brief, she was on her way for a Sunday ride, her husband was volunteering in a food booth, they appeared as a miss matched pair, he with his Sunday casual and Nametag, her in all leather, with a headscarf to match. 

We have an ocean of things that lay between us, some said, many left unopened, avenues shut down due to lack of travel, the past weighed heavy and the future silent, the moment was pregnant with possibilities.

This time I took her lead and allowed it to remain where she was comfortable, skimming along the surface with social words.

It seemed odd to me that I went along, and when we parted I felt the exchange wasn’t between two sisters, like I had been ripped off, wanting more but knowing more wasn’t mine to have.

It wasn’t the time nor the place to sit down and reconnect or connect, what felt good to me, was my absence of being mad. 

I felt I was in the moment doing all that the moment required, I didn’t drag in the past nor promise the future.  I met her there among the beautifully carved individual works of Art.

My amazement always goes to the Universe and how it can move both of us in the precision it takes to have us meet at that moment in time.

There was no sadness, no regret, no wishing, no hating, nothing as I walked away.  I felt wonderful to simply let her go, alone without me adding a segment of commands upon her.

She doesn’t have to call me, for she doesn’t, she doesn’t have to entertain me, plan to meet, seek to get together with me, nothing, she is free to go her own way.

I wondered about me, what I would say, what I would feel, and I now believe that we will meet when we do and it will be the same. 

I can simply not require more.  I moved to hug this girl, this little girl who when we were but wee things, I held her hand. 

Yet in that moment, she was just someone who listened at the time I needed, and then stopped wanting to hear.  I have respected her silence and gave her space.

In that space she is free to do what it is she wants to do.

She just doesn’t do sister, the intimate level sister she can only be the social sister.

I met my social sister sister and I wanted more, it seems I am always sitting in the spot of more.

In among the great objects of Art I found her and she is unique, she is different, can I look at her like that?  Do I have a choice? 

The diamond in the rough, the potential that lurks, if only escapes us both, the wrong time, the wrong place, no time and no place, moments that are awkward at best, missing more than they hold…..

In the space where sisterhood should lay it is so cluttered up that there is no space for me, no time for me, no effort left for me.

Until then, I miss what could have been.