Craziness in the Form of a Sister...Mine...

My sister has, in the middle of her life, found religion. This, on its own, isn’t monumental. She’s searched her entire life for an identity and I should have expected this old standard to be one of her stops on this, her journey.

I’ve little doubt that my words will sound harsh, especially to “believers,” but you have to know the players. My sister, six years my junior, has taste tested just about every persona she could conjure up. When she was small, she fancied herself a budding ballerina, as do many little girls. Rather than merely taking ballet lessons, however, my sister took on an affect: The Budding Ballerina. She floated about wearing pastel leotards, tights and fluttery, flowery skirts. In truth, it was a pretty cool look for a little girl in the early 70’s. The juxtaposition of her long dark, wildly curly hair, and the gentle pinks and yellows of her soft, simple outfits offered a beautiful balance to her developing craziness and her little girl sweetness.

She moved lightly during this phase, mimicking the carriage of the dancers she admired. Ballet posters began to adorn her half of the walls in our shared bedroom and she talked of being A Ballerina. A tiny part of me thought--hoped--she was following in my footsteps, albeit to an extreme. I had been taking dance lessons since before she could walk, and I was, after all, her big sister. It made sense. And it seemed a nice persona for this tiny person just coming into her own. I thought encouragement would be, well, encouraging, so I told her how pretty she looked, how I loved her outfits and that she danced (when, in reality, the persona involved more fashion than dance, but, hey, what’s encouragement without a healthy dose of bullshit?), how my friends thought it was so cool that she had already found so distinct a style…

But this, like all of the phases to come, was short lived. As I would soon discover, my encouragement helped end each phase. From A Ballerina she went to Athlete, trading her fluttering skirts and delicate shoes for heavy sweatshirts and muddy sneakers. She pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail and began to look more like one of our brothers than my little sister. I ran, so she ran. We were both light and fast, but she was more competitive than I. Just when she was about to make a mark, my admiration of her speed and grace penetrated, and she moved on.

In high school, she wanted to be a punk rock singer, regardless of the fact that every second spent on key was followed by a minute off, and she went from audition to audition dressed as a nightmare-inducing cross between Madonna in her I’m a Virgin stage and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister (oh, hey, irony). She fancied herself a true artist when some of my artwork was displayed in my school’s art cabinet, and decided that she could write after my brother's first book was published.

I went to law school and she hedged toward applying, too, but her course had begun to change. Instead of going to law school, my sister decided to become the wife of a lawyer. Working on a master’s in social work at Rutgers, she studied in the law library, becoming what she envisioned a future lawyer’s future wife to be: studious, demure, subservient and conservative. She began dating a law student and was crushed nearly beyond repair when he dumped her for someone with a personality of her very own. My sister had learned, though, that a persona is only as good as the effort put into it, and she quickly recalculated. Her mistake, she felt, had been in scoping out the educated. She began frequenting the enlisted men’s haunts at and around McGuire Air Force Base, near our parents’ home where she still lived. Within two weeks, my now 29 year old sister met and became engaged to an alcoholic enlisted 20 year old man.

New persona: Wife to be. My sister seemed almost normal during the two weeks we furiously planned and had her wedding. The night before, her fiancé, who had moved into my parents’ house, left for the base, smelling heavily of alcohol. My mother explained to my sister that it was not too late to call off the wedding. She talked about wanting my sister to be happy, and hoping she would never be with a man just to avoid being alone. My sister listened, as she rarely had, seemingly giving what my mother said great thought. She stroked the fabric of her wedding dress and said quietly, but with absolute conviction, “No. I want a wedding.”

“You can have another wedding, another time.” My mother’s voice was calm, her face pained.

“Yeah, with someone who deserves to be with you,” I chimed in, reluctantly.

“No, I want a wedding tomorrow. I want to wear this dress. Tomorrow.” And, with that, she left the room.

She went from wife to mother to divorced woman living with her parents. From there, she had many incarnations, dragging all who cared about her through turmoil and grief. She thought she'd add three adopted Columbian children to her family of two sons, spending all of her savings and, no doubt, leaving her sons feeling less than adequate. She became pregnant, dropped the idea of adoption, married a second time...blah, blah, blah...fast forward: Is a Christian.

What the fuck happened between becoming pregnant out of wedlock and becoming a Bible thumping, judgmental, utterly overbearing pain in the ass...okay, she was always an judgmental and overbearing pain in the ass...Christian? She now sends my brothers and me diatribes about how our sins can be erased...or fixed...frankly, none of it makes any sense to me. The diatribes start out talking about Yahoo...really, I shit you not...and end with something about Jews becoming Christians and...I think it's supposed to be something good...or at least better...?

I've asked her to stop sending it and she has, as a Good Christian, refused to honor my requests. I am, it would appear, not of sound mind to know what I believe. The first time I asked her to stop sending this offensive Jew-Turned-Christian-Because-It's-Only-Right reading material to me and the man with whom I live (a Jewish born, non-believing, non-practicing, non-religious, highly moral, more decent than most man), she yelled at my 80 year old mother that it was her fault that none of her children had religion. My mother, Yahoobadoo bless her soul, yelled back that she had no control over her 50 year old “children,” and my father, how I love that man, proudly proclaimed that he hoped it was their fault that they'd raised thinking people. But my sister, ever the fruitcake, persists. She continues to send out diatribes and blatherings and Yahooisms, none of which make any sense to me.

It's sad to me that my sister can't value me as a person, if not as a sister, and I'm left to ponder the same old question: Is she doing this as affect? I look at friends who have relationships with their sisters, and wonder why mine is, and always has been, so difficult, so contrary, so on the verge of non-existent. I have a very dear friend who has a crazy sister, too, and marvel that he sees mine as so off the wall and his as merely pathetic, as someone to be pitied and, as a result, indulged. Mine fumbles through personas while his puts hexes on the women he tries, in vain, to have relationships with. Why is his more worth an effort than mine, I wonder. The conclusion is, for me at least, that neither is worth that kind of effort. He's just more conditioned or better trained, or maybe he possesses a greater ability to say, "Uh-huh" and nod, while playing Stairway to Heaven in his head while his sister talks.

Let's face it, crazy is crazy. My sister—and his—can raise a hand, proudly and with vigor, when a count is taken of the annoying, creepy, judgmental fruitcakes in the audience. My friend tries to pretend that his crazy sister is less crazy than mine—praise Yabadabdoo for crazier sisters--as I try to figure out a way to convince my sister to have her beliefs without so utterly alienating me that I have to pretend that I don't have a sister.

It's sad. My sister has been through a hundred incarnations and still comes up wanting. And, if you think about it, mildly comical (she believes in Yabadaboohee, after all). And my friend, well, his sister is just nuts.