Birthday # 28

I was having a pretty terrific birthday weekend up until the last five minutes of it. I turned twenty eight on Saturday and felt surprisingly good about it. Twenty seven was hard, because I had the shocking realization that I could no longer legitimately say I was in my early/mid-twenties, it was the beginning of my late twenties. Now, the pieces of my game are starting to align in position, and I can begin to see how I'll move them in the near future to bring them into even better position, whereas between twenty one and twenty seven I was barely aware what game board I was even looking at. I just feel much better about where I am in my life; my decisions are feeling somewhat reasoned and intentional rather than arbitrary and vaguely shameful.
I also came away with some fantastic loot. In addition to sticking with me for another year, Beans got me a Wii! She also pulled a fantastic switcheroo, tricking me into thinkign I was getting a real clunker of a present. She knew I had to read this horrible, intelligence-insulting corporate self-help book called Who Moved my Cheese (seriously, avoid at all costs), and she seemed to have bought me a copy of the same author's follow-up book, some dreck about being a better manager. She wrote a little note inside the cover about how she hadn't had time for a more exciting present, but then underneath a little paper flap it she'd written, "Just kidding, the real present is a Wii! It's in the mail!" We had had a grumble earlier when the stimulus checks were on the way, where I wanted to buy something fun like, say, a Wii, this being the first time I'd actually thought about it. I feel ridiculous because it's so expensive, and she's sooo frugal, and never spends money on herself.
Then my brother and his girlfriend got me a bottle of this fantastic scotch we both love, McCallan. My mom gave me a fair chunk of cash, and my dad offered to get me a guitar pedal! (I've been looking into an MXR analog delay, but I've read some reviews about a reliability problem in the line...)
All in all, everything was looking really good until literally moments before we were going to leave our parents' house, the phone rang. My brother is going off to grad school to get a PhD in psych at Western Michigan (he's always been more sure of what he wants to do and how to go about doing it. Or maybe he's less apprehensive about following a trodden path. OR maybe he's more practical and thorough about life choices), and we were all kind of wanting to say goodbye without drawing it out awkwardly.
The phone rang at about nine and all of us stopped and just looked at the phone. Minna offered to pick it up. Obviously, this situation is s weird as it would seem to you, if anyone were reading this other than me.
I've had phone anxiety for ages now. When I was in middle school, the phone was frequently someone callign for me that I didn't ant to talk to: girls I was too scared to talk to and had NO idea hwo to flirt with, or even if I wanted to, or guys that I'd wound up hanging around with but didn't want to actually be friends with, friends I felt too bad about getting rid of, and then one afternoon my half sister called and told me she was an alcoholic. She made all these weepy apologies about how she wanted t be a bigger part of my life and felt bad about not having been a real sister to me. I hadn't realized how true that was until she said it. At the same moment, I began to realize (or admit to myself) how much I didn't want that. Even though we have the same father, I have much more in common with my cousins, whom I also never see, than with her. She's the epitome of spoiled, entitled, ignorant, classist/racist, self-absorbed poor little rich girl drama queens. I've never seen someone who's made so many terrible choices, ignored so man people, put herself ahead of so many, blamed so many for her own failings, expected to be given so much and do so little with herself, and abdicated so much personal responsibility for everything. Obviously, I have a troubled relationship with my "sister".
Minna answered, said, "Oh, hi E," and then listened for a few minutes. Then she handed the phone to my mom (even though she's not related to my mom, she's the only one she'll talk to). My mom said, "Uh huh, uh huh, OK, oh, you can't talk now? You'll call me back, OK, when?"
Apparently, she apologized for not having called in awhile, was getting back from a wedding and stuck at the airport, called to say hi and then claimed to not have time to talk. You called to to say you don't have time to talk? I wasn't sure if I was angry or worried. Beans picked up the phone, and this didn't appear to register as unusual with E. Part of me was worried for her safety; she seems like she's made her life into such a colossal wreck, and I worry about her ability to discern reality from imagination, and even to stay alive. This is a person who can do, apparently, nothing for herself and she has two children, one of whom is severely developmentally delayed and she's of course in total denial about it because she can't admit that something could be wrong with her "perfect life" and no, she doesn't realize what a fucking cheap cliché that is.
Mostly I was angry and disappointed. For a nanosecond I thought, maybe, just maybe, my fucking sister remembered it was my birthday and called to say happy birthday. I can't help but feel cheated; I have all the resentment, anxiety and awkwardness that comes with having a sibling, and none, none of the good parts.