Sunday, May 31, 1998

Reconnecting with a sister in middle age

By Sharon Randall

Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but my sister and I are starting to sound a lot like "Thelma and Louise."

Notice I say sound, not look. Big difference. There might've been a moment in our lives when we looked like Susan Sarandon or Geena Davis, maybe. On their worst days and out of make-up, of course. But lately, we look more like middle-aged sisters than movie stars. Actually, we look like our mother. On her worst days and out of make-up, of course.

But back to Thelma and Louise. I'm not sure if Bobbie is Thelma and I'm Louise or the other way around. I get them mixed up.

In the movie, they start out very different from each other, one being organized and sensible, the other about as ditzy as a female Richard Simmons. Then they seem to trade characters back and forth for a while. But in the end, they wind up exactly the same -- dead.

That's the point I keep stressing to my sister. "Are you sure we want to do this?" I say. "Even if it doesn't get us killed, we could end up killing each other."

For years, we seldom saw each other and rarely talked on the phone. We weren't estranged, really, just busy.

Growing up, we'd been close the way children often are when they take shelter in each other from life's storms. She left home at 16, when I was 10, and by the time I started college, she had three healthy babies and a dying marriage.

I moved to California, the end of the earth, married and had babies of my own. We might never have been close again, Bobbie and I, were it not for losing loved ones.

Funny, isn't it, how good things often come from bad? It started with our dad. Bobbie called to tell me he had taken his life and I flew home to help her make arrangements.

Our mother next

Next it was our mother. For several years, while she was being treated for cancer, I'd call her once a week to check her progress. Then I'd call Bobbie to get the real story. We'd talk about Mama's blood tests and such. But we'd also talk about our lives, who we were, things we did, what we loved or feared or hated.

It gave us new connection, the same closeness we had felt as little girls. It prepared us for facing our mother's death, which we did together, hand in hand, two years ago.

It even helped to soften the blow after my husband died last winter. When Bobbie flew out for his service, I took shelter in her, and she in me, as we had as little girls.

Now we talk long distance several times a week.

"I've got a plan," she said recently. "Put a bag on your head, go rob Nob Hill and I'll stick up Bi-Lo here. Then we can use the money to go to Cancun. What do you say?"

I say, my sister is crazy. I say, imagine what our mother would think, not about the felonies but about our getting on a plane to go traipsing off to foreign soil?

I say, maybe we could get the money some way short of armed robbery?

So I'm packing up my laptop to spend three weeks in my hometown, including a quick trip to Mexico with my sister.

It should be good for a few columns. Assuming we both make it back alive.

Sharon Randall is a winner of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and the Best of the West commentary awards.

Scripps Howard News Service