I’m pretty sure this is true: I haven’t seen my baby sister Marcia (she’s in the foreground, above, a tad younger), or, for that matter, sister Leslie, since shortly after my mom died in 2011. I know the Wife and the Daughter went down to North Carolina some period after that, but that was four years ago too.
Marcia and I talk on the phone, though there was a big gap from before Easter to late April, mostly to do with my busyness. We email, and we even text occasionally, though I’m not a great fan. Apparently Marcia and sister Leslie text all the time. I think my disincentive is that the messages are SO long on my not-really-made-for-texting device that I cannot read the whole thing; I end up emailing the message to MY email and reading them there, THEN replying.
I HAVE invited her up to visit from NC to upstate NY, but it hasn’t worked out yet.
Marcia’s decided we need to do the Skype thing. I’ll tell you the truth; I’m not a big fan of that, either. It looks weird to me, like selfies. BUT I see the value of the exercise.
We have a small tribe: me with my wife and daughter; Leslie, her daughter and son-in-law; Marcia and her daughter. Provisions must be made.
It’s Marcia’s birthday; happy natal day, baby sister.
I’m not a fan of Skype, either, but the rest of my family seems to have decided that this is the future and it’s wonderful. Both of my sisters want to Skype, but to be fair, one of them lives in Australia, and at least that way I get to see my baby niece.