28. The Colour Purple

 

A parable about my adopted sister, Laura.

Who my mother brought into our life because she wanted a pretty daughter. Laura was the daughter of a friend who had a younger husband and no time or energy for a child.

A long, long time ago, in an ancient land called childhood, on an ancient continent called Africa, two entirely different sisters, from entirely different mothers and fathers, grew to adulthood together in the same house.  They told each other of their first kiss, they envied each other's clothes and hair, they learned how to apply mascara together.  They snuck into movies illegally together, when the ushers weren't watching.  They raved about different rock stars together.  They started "the curse" together, giggled together, and had their hearts broken by different boys at the same time.  They kept secret, locked diaries.  They perfumed their cupboards with lavender sachets.  One washed her hair with camomile flowers to encourage curls, the other ironed hers straight as a fence. They bitched about their mothers,  they loved their grandmothers and they fought with their brothers.  They had budgies and cats and pimples and hot pants and sideburns and hair spray and white eyeshadow and white lipstick and false eyelashes.  They were as unalike as America and the Annapurnas, but they cut their fingers in blood rites to be sisters 4 eva.

Then as things happen in ancient lands, they got married, around the same time, to different men.  They had their children around the same time.  But somehow the sisters weren't sisters anymore.  Secrets became closed secrets.  Misunderstandings became major maelstroms. One compounded the problem by emigrating with husband and child to a ridiculously hot and dusty land, away from the mountains.  One stayed with the mountains, and looked after the other's mother.  The other was jealous that she didn't have a mother in a hot ridiculous continent with no mountains.  She was jealous because she believed her own mother loved her not-real sister more than she was loved as a blood child.  She was jealous because her not-real sister was beautiful and tall and dark, and she was not.  Both were unhappy, in various forms.  Both got divorced. Children got scattered across continents, like dandelions. The sisters didn't talk for years and years and years and years and years and years and years.

The mother of the runaway sister in the hot, ridiculous country with no mountains died.  This sister returned to nurse her and then dispatch her off to her next life.  The sister that had stayed behind turned up at the cremation.  Neither spoke to the other, but there was only one person the one who'd returned to cremate her mother wanted to hug.  Her long lost sister.  She wanted to wrap her arms around her and thank her for looking after her mother for all those years that she was trying to make a life in a hot ridiculous country with no mountains, and now no husband and some scattered children.  She wanted to say I know we haven't spoken for years and years and years and years and years but I have always loved you as a sister.  And I miss you.

When this blog began, the sister who had stayed with the mountains found her runaway sister on facebook.  She started watching, and then reading.  And she started saying some really lovely, pertinent, poignant, warm, sisterly things.  The sister who was running stopped to watch, and then listen.   And when the sister with the mountains said that it was time to stop crying, and time to smile, and to celebrate freedom, and to be away from negative influences - the running sister stopped crying because from her tiny room at the top of a tiny hotel in a crowded shitty with cows and lepers and plastic bags and missing pups and mad sadhus and painted cows, she did indeed have something to smile about.

No matter how far she ran, she would always have her sister.

The left-behind sister - visiting her child scattered in Los Angeles, wrote about shopping and Mexicans and crumpled currency and having pedicures with her daughter.  The running sister  sent messages back from Kathmandu, about street kids and Nepalis and crumpled currency and being sad and lonely.

The mountain sister told her to kiss her hurt better, and smile - new beginnings await.

And the running sister knew that if it wasn't for all the hurt - from the mother, from the You Know What, from Dangerous D - from the Heap Big Shits over the years ... she wouldn't be writing this blog.  She wouldn't have her sister back.  Or the Goddesses who have carried her over the thorns on her path, scattering petals.   Or beautiful Luda who arrives on Wednesday.  Or the smiling sadhus heaping blessings, and the weddings. And bugger Holi.   Perhaps she needed this ground zero to get it all out finally, because what was left, was the deepest part of the grief and she has now touched it.   And it was all over a couple of bags of coloured powder and memories of a person who no longer exists the way he was.

Then running sister knew.  When she stopped running for a bit, the first thing she would do would have a pedicure with her own daughter. Wherever that may be.  And they would smile, and laugh, and know that blood bonds can never ever be broken, no matter how far you run, or how deep in the mountains you stay.

And then she would go visit her sister in the mountains.  And they would hug.  And they would cry. And then they would laugh. Oh, how they would laugh.