New leaves

It's a great time a year, my favourite actually. Late May/early June is when the leaves are still a new lime green and the air is scented. It's the time of my birthday, and I'll be 55 this year, and landmark that I will successfully reach and still be walking. When I reached 50 and was still walking, having been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when I was 43, I reset my goal for age 55 and here I am, almost.

I have made up with my sister in the past 5 months and then Michal this past weekend. Once again I have our trip to Utah to look forward to. That's coming up in only 3 weeks! I can hardly wait, but doing my best to keep a lid on my excitement for now. That may change when I pick up my new camera tomorrow.

The other reason for gratitude is a new relationship with my brother Rob, who has never been close to me. He's 9 years my younger and I left home when he was still 8. I have heard that brothers bond better if they have both weathered puberty together while growing up, and we didn't. He took a different path than the rest of the family (just as each of us did), becoming a boring-again proselytizing Christian, then an Amway salesman marketing image and avarice, and eventually settling into promoting various forms of alternative health therapies, such as iridology and trainer of holistic allergists. (He trained my sister who has treated me.)

Rob did not call me for 16 months after being told of my diagnosis in 1997 and his interest in my well-being was lukewarm at best. In subsequent years he passed through town again and again without even leaving me a phone message. His business and church friends who held judgmental "family values" always meant more to him than his family. I remember I organized a family dinner to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary in 1992 but he opted to attend a birthday party for one of his "down line" instead, though our father was already ill and unlikely to make it to another landmark anniversary.

When I mentioned to him that the candida cleanse he had recommended had left me weaker than before and caused me to fall three times in 12 days this spring, he said that was unlikely as he had known 13,000 people to take the cleanse and none of them had reported losing any strength. I lost it. I asked him how many of them had the same type of MD as I had, knowing full well that no one knows exactly what is causing mine. Hot words were exchanged in both directions and we spilled the beans about resentments and judgments we had held against each other over the past couple decades. In doing so, we opened up our wounds and hearts and apologized for our lack of communication and interest in each other. It was very eye opening and a great relief. Now it is more important than ever to develop a habit of openness and communication to build a new connectedness that lasts.

Gawd nose, we might actually create a functional family eventually. I'm all for it.

"Find a place inside where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." - Joseph Campbell
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