GRECIAN YEARN

by Michaelene Friedersdorf

I finally heard again from my sister Rory.

I was surprised she didn't call sooner after her trip but I guess that's just her and I shouldn't have expected anything different. She said she was thinking about me the whole time she was in Greece and was wondering if I had made any decision about what I was going to do about the house in Florida. I found that really funny (funny's probably the wrong word but I'm just so tired) anyway, it's funny because I really had thought that we would be making at least THAT decision together, and but the fact that she was leaving it entirely up to me must have something to do either with the fact that she still hadn't fully come to terms with my mother's death...OUR mother's death, or that she still, even at 34, thinks enough of me as the 'big sister' (and of course, and probably more importantly, herself as the 'little sister') that the only thing she can do is go along with the decision the adult is making.

So I actually just hung up on her. There was this moment of silence and I realized that if I didn't say anything else we would just sit there silently NOT talking to one another the way we had many times before. So I just hung up; like you would hang up on a tele-marketer.

"We're just calling to ask Ms. Friedersdorf if you have smoke detectors in your home."

"Yes I do." Click

If that's all you wanted to know then there you go. There was a time that I would labor to think of something to say to Rory. This time I just ended the call. And exactly as I suspected she didn't call back. She just took it.