Tis the season...

of envy and want. Isn’t it? My sister and I were laughing yesterday about how we never know we need anything until we go to the mall. Now shopping is an exercise I freely participate in regularly. I discovered at some point though, that to be in a position of frequent WANTING made me feel really uncomfortable. Especially when that want was focused as ENVY, which if you ask me is the worst feeling ever because once you put your foot in it, it becomes difficult to ever, ever stop and the tricky thing about envy is that it allows you to think your problem is about someone else when putting yourself through butt plumping injections could never give you J-Lo’s life anyway.

Sisters do envy very well. It’s some kind of inherent horror that you have to experience if you have a sister. As kids, my sister was always the more fearless, the cheerleader, the popular sort and I was the bookish, incredibly uncomfortable in her skin, band geek sort. I know you are saying to yourself, “WHAT? But she’s so COOOOL.” You could probably find evidence of this on the world wide web if you wanted, but even 25 years later I would pay you not to post it. My big sister and I weren’t really in opposition, just good at different things, but more than anything I wanted to be like her – easy to catch on to the rhythms of people, savvy socially, beautiful. She could feather her hair just so and I challenge anyone to beat her knowledge of Purple Rain. Hell, she BROUGHT pink and green monograms to the planet. Even worse, she was smart. I was rewarded and acknowledged for my own geeky talents in my corner of the planet, but I would have traded a lot for the easy way she moved in the world. Envy isn’t wise. It makes a person believe it’s the clothes or the friends or the trappings that could earn you that happiness, but surely we can figure out that’s not what you’re really after when you envy. So in typical young person fashion I just thought of things maybe that weren’t so perfect about my sister and focused on those. A lot. I helped envy build a real ugly ditch for me and kept myself from experiencing the affection my sister would have gladly given me. She was proud of who I was, but I wasn’t.

It took a long time for me to set it aside and actually GET that developing my own life and talents should be my focus and that it could allow me to be a better recipient of her many gifts (she is still incredible – a smart, creative, lovely, talented mom). There’s only one other person on the planet that can verify some of the ridiculous events I experienced with my parents (sweet Lord, that’s a GOLD MINE so stay tuned) and that shared history is a treasure to me. We are now both women who would gladly give one another any sweater, any car, any friendship that we could offer, but that could only happen when I could see the ugly damage envy brings. We have plans to be the crazy sisters who live together when we are old. She will entertain the neighborhood children with her cheerleading acrobatics while I play the oboe. You’ll have to stop by sometime for the show.

I guess this post isn’t about the mall anymore. Remember that album by Sinead O’Connor called “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”? Two points: First, I hope that phrase sticks in your head like it does mine sometimes and protects us from the ugliness of want and envy this holiday. Second, I think Sinead does want something real bad because she just got married in Vegas to husband number 4 and she still shaves her head. I saw this on the internet last week. We can discuss that later.