improve my relationship with my sister

I can’t remember the last time we did that. It does happen occasionally, maybe once a year. We vowed not to wait so long before we talk again.

beginning with me visiting her home, which I have never seen, and continuing with a camping trip in one of her state’s many famously breathtaking national parks.

We’ll see if she accepts my offer. Perhaps she already has her vacation plans set for the coming year.

Silly me, why didn’t I read my last entry here and just send her an email?

I left her a message a few weeks ago about my new job, even offering to come visit her on my last week of unemployment. She never called back. And then, as usual, I responded by leaving her more messages—which never works. Even now, I was just calculating the time difference and wondering if it’s too early to call her.

But now that I have some perspective, I’ll write her an email instead.

Yay, we are now interacting! As I suspected, email seems to be the way to go in communicating with her.

For two weeks I have been leaving ever-more-frantic-sounding messages for her, and getting no response. I have yet to speak with her in person about her husband’s health! By now I have heard through the family grapevine that the large lump in his chest was nothing and it’s been removed.

Plus I haven’t had a chance to tell her about getting laid off! But maybe she’s heard about that by now, too.

Then finally last night I got a call from a stranger, wondering why I’ve been leaving all these crazy messages on his machine. Ack! The auto-dialer on my phone wasn’t dialing the 1 before the area code! Funny how he waited until I started sounding really desperate before he called me back.

Solving that mystery can only be a huge step forward in my ability to invest in my relationship with my sister!

He’s going to a specialist today to have it checked out. I have been calling and emailing, and my sister has expressed gratitude for my support.

Wow, that’s more progress on this goal than I expected in so short a time, but I guess health crises can do that to families.

And I won’t wait for a response from her, I’ll just send one say every 2 weeks or once a month whether she responds or not. She does seem more responsive to email than snail mail or telephone calls, so this seems like the best approach.

We have barely talked since her wedding last fall, and I don’t want to let this small gap turn into a huge impenetrable wall of years.

I did something like this years ago with postcards, I sent one every two weeks for a year or two, and it definitely did help. The next time I saw her at a family gathering, I could tell there was more trust, like she knew that I was invested in having a relationship with her.