Reading: A Fabulous Creature

Moving: Walked 3.6 miles

Learning: the Dorothy Canfield who wrote The Homemaker and The Brimming Cup is the Dorothy Canfield Fisher who wrote Understood Betsy.

29 April 2000: My guts

So I told RDC about my father's infidelity and he asked, "So are you surprised?" and I said not really, and then he said, "Does this mean you and CLH are only half-sisters?" and I felt like someone kicked me in the gut before I realized the flaw in his query. By the time I had my breath back, he'd corrected himself.

My sister is my sister and I harbor no doubts about our paternity. The marvel of genetics makes us each look exactly like each of our parents, depending on the light and the beholder. Climbing Tree help us, there's no doubt about our parentage.

Would it matter, now, if we were but half-blood?

I just read another Sharon Creech, Absolutely Normal Chaos. It's not as good, not by half, as Walk Two Moons, and--not that this isn't obvious but still--spoiler: someone isn't whose child he thought. His father from birth is still is father, though, because your father is who raises you and worries over you, not just who provided the sperm. My sister is my sister because we, in our little-butted toddlerhoods, peed at the same time (without ever an accident), and in our spindly-legged youths (actually I was a butterball) climbed the same trees together, and in our adolescence beat the mutual shit out of each other, and finally learned to get along. She is the only thing I have worthwhile out of our parents' three-decade-long torture fest, and no accident of genetics can change that.

It took me until Friday afternoon to realize that we might yet have half-siblings. Now, that's unlikely, but an interesting prospect. Would they be our siblings too, just because of blood?

Not necessarily. I do not acknowledge RDC's sister as mine as well, but I do acknowledge DMB as my mother-in-law, not just "my husband's mother." Her I like. I don't dislike my mother's husband, but I'll never call him my stepfather or his daughters my stepsisters, because I choose my family, and they don't make the cut. But they're not blood. Anyway, blood or not, I choose my family.

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I successfully pursued Cowboy Junkies tickets this morning. When other people showed up at the Fillmore box office, I loved them automatically: I had been there for two geological eras alone and wondered if the sign lied that the box office would open at 10, if I should go to a TicketMonster and wait behind all the Metallica ticker-buyers. But then Laura and Jana and their dog Margo showed up. Clearly, I was among friends. By ten, there were maybe a dozen people in line. The box office opened and I scored my tickets and went home. Now if I only don't lose them in the move, I'll be a happy camper.

While I was waiting, I finished a letter to my sister. For my belovèd technophobe, I'd already printed out the web page I made about the house, and now I annotated it and wrote a letter on the back. I'm sure it was a particularly delightful epistle because in addition to stressing that the box office would never open, I stressed about the move. RDC called me while I fretted to tell me U-Haul left voicemail saying they couldn't confirm our truck reservation until two weeks before the move--this despite the assurances of the nice man I spoke with on Friday. So CLH got the brunt of the no tickets, no truck stress. Which is a good thing for you, OMFB, since for you I just happen to mention my boring letter instead of venting its contents.

When I mailed her letter and checked our box, there was a card from her. As I should have expected. We do that.

Once home safe with tickets, we went for a walk then spent the rest of the afternoon back to back at our respective computers. Except at one point, RDC decided to take a nap. We often hide our feet with strategically placed objects to prevent Blake falling in lust with them. By removing one obsessive stimulus from Blake, RDC inadvertently gave him another. He loves caves. Also he likes to preen fringe.

Also in the mail was a Restoration Hardware catalog. Thumbing through it, RDC exclaimed, "That would have made filming 'The Wall' much easier!"