My baby sister (age 50) is moving from Tucson to Los Angeles, but you don’t know the half of it.
She’s been living in Tucson for what seems like forever, almost 30 years. I can’t tell you how many changes and trials she’s gone through in her life during that time. I guess a lot of us do, but plenty don’t — and even fewer of us put ourselves through nursing school in our late 40s, paying for it by working 12-hour shifts in the emergency ward. It’s more than that, though: there’s a spiritual thing working here that grew her heart bigger than the sun. She’s in the zone, and things are happening. In just a short while she’ll be starting a perfect nursing job at USC. This is great news for her and better tidings for everyone there than they’ll ever know. I’m not talking about material success, you understand. She’ll be fine, but the main thing is the energy.
You sort ‘em out
She and her son Anthony came to visit us in Taos right after my birthday this past summer. I hadn’t seen my nephew since he was small enough to spank and being an uncle didn’t mean so much. (This guy makes me stand up straight and be the coolest fuckin’ geezer on the block.) My sister, meanwhile, was on a kind of personal quest. She still is.
I’m amazed at how much more alike we are now. It’s weird, like I only just met her, and yeah, she’s my sister and we speak the same language. What’s even more encouraging to me is the example she’s providing. Think of it, how many of us start accelerating at 50 in this way?? And one more time: it’s not the money. (She’s a nurse, remember.) It’s what she’s tapped into, maybe without knowing it.
I may have to go out to LA and take lessons.
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That’s a touching and lovely tribute to your sister, clearly an admirable lady in her own right, but I also like what it says about the two of you as brother and sister keeping together in some way on your separate journeys through life. I also liked what you had to say about energy being the thing that drives us in our quest – not money, not honors. You got that one right too. Living unapologetically (if not conflictedly, being human after all) is all we can hope to do in our brief transit this side of the earth. Jobs, for example – yeah, you got to put food on the table and a roof over the head and all that. But what’s most important about work is self-expression, is actualization of one’s talent for life in the broadest sense. You can’t jam all of yourself in to a paycheck, of course, but getting as much as possible in is a pretty good start on the road to happiness. Frost said something about striving to maike his avocation into his vocation that sounds about right. Of course, much of this is a matter of luck and fortuitous opportunity. Life, notoriously, is a crapshoot, and sometime, somewhere the crap is going to hit, so it also helps to acquire early a habit of being able to deal with adversity. Sounds like your sister has that habit in spades.
This is all kind of middle-brow, but I never got my brow much further off the ground than that anyhow, and it’s a pleasure for a change to whole-heartedly say amen to your sentiments, Brother Farr.
I’m in LA now – if she needs an assist, please feel free to pass my contact along