Family Dynamics (2 of 2)

My sisters are a different story. How can I describe the dynamic between the Baldwin sisters? We were raised by parents who were very emotionally reserved. Actually, I found out as an adult that my Dad had all the reserve, and my mother adopted it (or tried to) because…well, I don’t know why. I think it was because she admired it in my dad. But if there ever was a human being who operates on a purely emotional level, it’s my mother. Maybe that’s why she started to drink when she hit middle age. But that’s a story for another day…

We grew up with a standard set by Dad. He was reserved, intelligent, and fiercely independent, in a quiet and determined sort of way. And a cardinal rule of his was that anything that happened inside the family, STAYED inside the family. One did not air one’s dirty laundry in public. He kept his own "dirty laundry" to himself, and the family’s stayed neatly contained inside the four walls of our home (where it sometimes got REALLY ripe.) For good or ill, each of us has adopted most, if not all, of my father’s rules for adulthood. My dad was a MAN (obviously), and of a different era, and the five of us WOMEN have not always had it easy trying to make our way through our contemporary lives under his rules. But they’re so deeply ingrained, we can’t shed them.

So, does it really surprise me that my sisters won’t read my journal? I suppose not. We just don’t relate to each other on that sort of emotional level. There are times that we know we should, and we try…but we generally fail miserably. This is probably why things were so god-awful between us after Dad died. We NEEDED to share our emotional upheaval with each other, and we didn’t know how to do it in a constructive way. I love my sisters. We hang out, we do holidays…people on the outside call us "close." And we ARE, in that there is the unbreakable steel strap of family love that binds us together. But on an emotional level, we just can’t connect. I, for one, really wish we could.