:: Sunday, March 11, 2001 ::

 

12:24 a.m. It's funny how your siblings stay frozen in pseudo-time in your head, forever a certain size in relation to your pseudo-size. Take my little sister, for example. She will always seem half my size, but fast.

Smaller, years younger, but nonetheless capable of finding anything secret in my drawers or things hidden under the bed or stuff stuffed at the bottom of the closet. Why she didn't decide to become a detective is beyond me. She certainly has the skills.

However, these days she's taller than me and she has a family of her own, with kids all grown up, almost. And in about five hours, she's going to have an operation on her heart that should put that organ back on perfect, synchronized track.

She sounded calm as can be today -- the rest of us are nervous wrecks. Of course it will go smoothly because this is the twenty-first century and because she is in perfect health otherwise, with no bad habits to speak of. and because this is not too extreme a surgery, or so she tells us.

However, I'm feeling a little guilty for all the times I pounded on her, or treated her badly when I was supposed to be babysitting and especially, since we unfortunately had to share a bed for many years, for all the times I pulled the covers off her and pushed her right onto the floor while she was sleeping.

We'll all be happier when she's out of surgery, out of danger, and out of the hospital. Meanwhile, I plan on being awake at 5 a.m. my time as she enters that dreamless place they put you in when they have to rummage around in your internal organs.

This time, I'm going to say a little prayer and close my eyes and gently tuck the covers around her, nice and neat, so that she'll feel fine.