A difference of opinion or how sisters see things from such different vantage points; brothers too.

I have had some serious time to reflect on the art of perception. In this case, it's personal. I am now an official orphan. Amelia never got that far; she died before her mother. But Muriel did. She lost her sister, then her mother. And lived on and on and on. I know that she and Amelia had starkly different ideas of who their parents were. The letters show it. Amelia idolized her father, then was disappointed in him and came back to him at the end, she was the one who was there when he died. And Amelia seemed to resent Muriel's relationship with their mother; the tensions apparently exacerbated by Amelia's choices. Her husband. Her career path. These were both hard for her mother to adapt to, a woman who divorced her own husband was still quite conventional. As was Muriel, although over time she became much less so. At least in my view.

But today I'm writing of my own experience. You grow up together and yet you grow up separately. Your parents are so different with each of you. My father and I never really managed a rapprochement. His final words to me were, "You've gained weight." Let it be said, I'm rail thin. When my second novel came out, he arrived with the only bad review I received in hand. I'd never even known about it till then. I had to sit there and read it while he watched me. He wanted to know whether I knew the person who'd written it? No. Besides, it was published in the New York Law Journal. I had been reviewed in a host of national newspapers including the LA Times, the St. Louis Post Dispatch etc. This was what he brought to my attention. I still don't understand it, or him. He's been dead for years and he eludes me. Yet my siblings were enamored of him. So was my mother. He was the ideal man, the ideal father, and I think their best friend. How can people living the same life have such divergent opinions. Where was that father when I was growing up? I still don't know.

As for my mother, she was mine to deal with. My siblings wouldn't agree, but that was how it felt to me. And I grew to love her after years of strife. I always admired her. But I also found her enraging. She was purposely so; she fought with you over everything and nothing and I suppose you could say, she had no shame. She could have used a little. But in the end, all that falls away. She managed to convey her pride in me and that was enough. She was hardly an easy person, or a fun person, but she was what I had. And I learned how to accept her limitations and how to push her to be a better parent, and finally a friend.

Yet she was never my best friend. That was impossible. She was my parent and it's different. I see it with my own children, they need me to parent them. They want that. They don't want a friend, though sometimes they confide in me or share things with me and I feel honored. Mostly, they need me to be the adult. I needed the same from my parents and when I became an adult too, I needed them to honor that. My mother learned how. My father? I don't think he ever really did. Not with me anyhow.

So I return to Amelia and Muriel and wonder, how did they feel about their parents? What regrets did they have about those relationships? It seems to me that Amelia and Muriel were always the adults; that their mother and father acted like children. Amelia in particular took on the job of caring for everyone, or providing for them, and then she was gone and it was Muriel's turn.

Parents are imperfect, their imperfections mark us; for better or for worse. Make that for better and for worse.