Sister in the Wild

There are patches of woods along the train tracks, and in one of them, I saw three or four tents. They did not at all seem like the sophisticated ones you buy in sporting goods stores for camping on your vacation. They were black, small, weathered. I wonder who camps along the train tracks in such poor-quality-looking tents. But they were shielded from the bothers of civilization, even in this tiny patch. How the patch is positioned allows few to see them and for the tent inhabitants to really see anyone else.

The rivers around some of these patches of woodland were frozen again. The temperature dropped, but thankfully the sky remains clear and blue. I can see the sun reflecting off the window panes of one of the buildings outside my window when I get up. I can still see twilight when I wait for the train to go home around 6. Pretty soon my new life would be engulfed in sunlight, finally.

But even before that life goes on. And for my little sister, it seems to have been on a flat-line for a long time, since returning from New York after dropping out of college. My other sister called last night, as we have agreed to do every Tuesday night, at least for a little bit. She talked about our "baby" sister who, unfortunately, isn't a baby anymore, not in physical look, at least. I realized an irony in my life in terms of family. My sister, the older one, told me in an email after reading my blog entry about our Mother's letter to me, that she was very surprised by the letter, that she, too, expected something nasty, unpleasant, at least, that she held her breath when she saw that I got a letter from that woman. She felt hopeful knowing that even our Mother could turn around, slowly, very late in life, but could turn around the bend and do the right thing, be brave enough to show what she really is like inside, even behind the wall.

So the irony is that my little sister, the smallest, the youngest of the family, is the one I feel most hopeless about. In retrospect, we shouldn't be so extremely surprised about my Mother. After all, she has always been a fighter. An incessant complainer, yes. Always wishing for a better life, understandable in light of where she had to grow up in. She came to this country alone, with just a mother who was more of an acquaintance since she had only seen her for a few years at the beginning of her life before her mother went abroad forever. And she managed to survive and send money back home before the rest of her family came and joined her. So my Mother, being venomous as she has always been, is a fighter, and the venom is not unusual for fighters. This is perhaps one reason for which she is so restless, so ambitious, so constantly dissatisfied with life, especially elements in it closest to her.

But still, she is a fighter. And that, unfortunately, is not what my little sister has become. She is just letting life pass her by, and sustaining on the love and generosity of always some man, whether her Dad, me, or a boyfriend. She isn't living in a modern time, but rather in some Victorian era where a woman isn't expected to be anything more than a pretty object in a middle-class home, rearing children at some point. Cut away the husband, then you had better hope your Dad still has the will and money to support you. I was telling my other sister that marriage, though somehow had become the target of feminism in the past century or so, was originally beneficial more for the woman than for the man because it was the bond that ensured a woman access to resources in a society where women weren't allowed to work or take up business. It was only when women started to become independent from men that the institution that had in part meant to keep them safe from destitution turned out to be a fetter of freedom.

No one is prohibiting my sister from working, or going to school, or being the person she can be on her own. When my other sister asked her what she would do if her boyfriend left for whatever reason, she simply said she didn't want to stress about it. To say this is laziness is to fail to see the depth of the problem here. And it is that depth that makes me feel, ironically now, more hopeless about her being "someone" than my Mother overcoming her own challenges with love and family. My Mother, who doesn't need to work, who is too tired for most work, decided to take some courses on, not sure the proper term, taking care of the elderly. Caretaker? And now she travels to the Lower East Side to help those at the twilight of their lives do the most basic functions. She is paid minimum wage. She is not doing this really for the money; she doesn't want to sit at home alone. In some twisted way, my little sister is older than my Mother.

But I don't want to do anything about it. I have done more than most brothers in the world in my position would have done. And any interference would just make my sister be more resistant. I told my other sister that in my pessimism I believe the only way for her to turn around the bend is for some catastrophe to happen. When you have sunken so deep in the quicksand of your own choosing, the only thing you can do to get out is to be yanked out really hard, very violently, at the risk of being killed by the very violence of the action. Life gives you always a chance to take control of your destiny, but if you don't, destiny will come one way or another.

If she must live in a tent by some train track, then so be it.

Yet, this isn't even about changes. It is entirely possible that she would leave a Victorian life. She could eventually get married, ensuring some economic help in case the husband has a change of heart afterward. She could have children. She could grow old seeing them go through their own versions of life. I suppose if that's the life she chooses then she will be lucky to have it in this day and age.

When I was waiting for the passengers to leave the train before getting on, I saw a woman dressed in some bizarre way. She was wearing a rather ugly plain long coat in faded blue. Her face was so full of that low-level fear and insecurity, not enough to make you think she's afraid of some imminent danger, but you know she is afraid of something. What struck me most was that she was wearing a reflector vest, the kind that people working at some construction site would, or joggers that need to be seen by motorists. It was a protector, but why? Why did this woman have this vest, which itself was faded and ugly, over her equally uninteresting coat?

Despite my fears and hopelessness about my little sister, I also know that there are plenty of people out there who have it worse, who despite having a job and having a diploma, are psychologically more bizarre than my sister. And being reminded of the existence of these people, being reminded of the reality that life really does have many ways of living it, not just my way or the way of my other sister or of my Mother, in turn reminds me that the real reason I feel helpless isn't related to my sister. In the same way my Mother is overly concerned, I am concerned for reasons of something unresolved within myself. I have a certain belief of how life should be, we all do, but like most of us, I don't know even realize what that way is until someone comes along and refuses to live that way. It is therefore difficult for me to know rationally how "wrong" the other person is as long as I have this anxiety over my own opinion for how life should be lived. When I can get over this anxiety I can feel less hopeless, and I think only then can I really talk to my little sister on this matter.

The train is pulling close to those big glass buildings now. The people in there, the person I work with, I have only known for less than two months. I wonder in what ways they are more "successful" than my sister who's living at home, playing video games, raising a cat and a couple of betta fish.