Growing Up with Tiss

   I cannot remember when I started calling my sister "Tissy."  I vaguely remember getting that term from a friend in High School, but we weren't close then, and I can't imagine using a term of endearment for her when I was a teenager.  We fought all the time.  All the time.  She was neat, I was messy, she was disciplined, I was too busy socializing.  I remember her going off to college, having my first boyfriend and subsequent kiss and wishing I could share it with her.   In those days, long distance phone calls were expensive and a post-Great Depression dad made it impossible to use the phone for a chat.
   She got married when I was in college and it's too long of a story to talk about the conflict of that.  Suffice it to say that even though we were not quite close yet, I was jealous of her husband because I knew that he would be the one whom she shared stories with and he would come first, and rightly so.  She didn't know any of that because she was having to deal with me on another level;  that and she had fever of 102 as she walked down the aisle.  In pictures we all look happy and she does too, but you can see it in her eyes that she didn't feel up to par.
   Over the years we have gotten very close and for the life of me I cannot remember when she became my best friend.  Now I know that her husband is her BFF and my husband is my BFF, but she and I are best friends in a way that can't be described.  We got our hair cut short in different states and described it over the phone and laughed because it was the same style.  We couldn't remember a song to buy a CD for our children and found the right song using the same stanza, again in other states.  We have done these "twin things" for years and we laugh at how other-worldly it is.  And when our mother died, she was the one on the phone with me when I was looking into an abyss wondering if I could ever get out.  She pulled me out.  We have buried our parents together,  a child of hers together, and shared countless highs and lows over the phone or in person.
   Last summer we had a major bump in our relationship and it threw me so much that I couldn't sleep for weeks. Such is the depth of our relationship.
   So here I am using her computer while she is off at work and I'm getting ready to go to a university to hopefully find some grad-student interns, and I am thinking about what a good time we had last night.  She and her husband made a wonderful meal and shared a bottle of wine from their extensive wine collection (and yes, I am fairly jealous of that collection but that's for another blog) and it was so good to be with them.  It was relaxing and fun to just sit around the table and talk, and then watch an episode of "Mad Men." We are going to get together again next month to spend the anniversary date of our mother's death.  We don't do that for our dad's.  We do it for our mom because she would've loved the wine, the cooking and the friendship that we have, and she would've so enjoyed the way we have come full circle enjoying what she enjoyed.  Sometimes I marvel at how blessed I am and how great it is to be growing up with Tiss.