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Sister-Wife


The wives of polygamists refer to themselves as “sister-wives”. I think this is meant to impose a familial relationship on something that could easily dissolve into something competitive and downright ugly were it not for the veneer of a pseudo-relationship that the term implies. Despite my own negative views on this subject, I began to wonder the other day if the term didn’t more aptly describe my relationship with Shelley.

Shelley was Rob’s wife. She died eight months after my husband, Will, back in 2006. Today is her birthday. She would have been 47 years old. Just a few months older than Rob and he never let her forget it. Now he must contend with being older then I am by a couple of years, and I am not sure why I think this, but I’ll bet Shelley is enjoying that particular turn of the table.

When I stop to ponder Shelley and Rob and myself and the circumstances that bind us, I know I could write a novel that would set me on Oprah’s sofa in a heartbeat. But life is not a book of the month, at least not this life that we share. Anyway I am not certain I am accomplished enough to find the words, craft the sentences and paragraphs that would explain us or if I could, that I would really want to.

I live in the house that Shelley called home. The colors on the wall and the decor are hers. The garden out back and the hanging planters grew things she planted. There is a room in the basement crammed to the ceiling almost with things that mostly belonged to her once and what isn’t there sits on shelves and in cabinets and hangs in closets upstairs and down.

Our kitchen is more and more mine now, but there are still elements of Shelley. The dining room too. However the bed where Rob and I sleep and make love was the place of similar activities when she was alive and still well. That last part doesn’t cross my mind much at all truthfully, but when it does it certainly gives a surreal twist to things.  

Her birthday fell on and around Mother’s Day every year and as is common when one’s birthday falls too close to a major gift-giving holiday, Shelley got more than her share of combination gifts in much the same way my friends and family tended to lump my birthday with Christmas whenever they could get away with it. As Rob was telling me this, it occurred to me that from this point on, I will share this holiday with Shelley. Our daughters have a common father in Rob now but though I might likely be grandmother to her children’s children someday, I will not be a mother to her daughters in the same way that Rob fathers my little girl much as I might love and care for their happiness and welfare. An awesome task though nevertheless, and I wonder all the time if I am doing a good enough job.

I wonder sometimes too if I had known Shelley would we have been friends. I don’t think so because I don’t make friends easily especially with outgoing people and judging by her oldest daughter, Farron, I think she was. She was deeply committed to her ideals and values. I am still figuring much of that out. A farm girl, she was handy in the outdoors. As an asthmatic with more allergies than should be humanly possible, I am more of a liability in any woodsy situation than not. Still, we both found love in Rob which suggests some mutual ground I have yet to discover though recently Rob related to me that Shelley and I have common ground in weight struggles. Though he finds my concerns now and hers of long ago a bit mystifying, like me Shelley was a fitness nut who made eating healthy a priority. Weight, gaining or losing, is somewhat of a stereotypical female bonding ground (of course it is also a source of much friction as well).

Sisters do not choose each other. They are born into families and learn to co-exist. Sometimes quite happily and lovingly. Sometimes not at all. More often than not such relationships fall somewhere in between understanding and merely shared heritage. Shelley and I did not choose each other. Rob choose us. First her and then me. In the earliest days here, I felt a presence that I can’t say for sure was hers but that seemed to be studying and watching. It was neither welcoming nor repelling. Just there. I haven’t felt that for a while. Perhaps I have been judged and found adequate. I choose to think that.

Happy Birthday, Shelley.

Imaginary Friends


My daughter has a veritable menagerie of imaginary friends. Since she lives much of her life as though she were Julie Andrews on Broadway, I hear her warbling about their exploits from all over the house. She is quite frank about these friends however.

“They are just imaginary, Mom.”

How refreshing to be so realistic about the limitations of those you chose to call companions.

My husband is always reminding me not take the blogosphere so seriously. While we meet a lot of wonderful and interesting people, some of whom go on to become real friends, most people we meet are really just strangers.

In a way, cyber friends can be somewhat like the imaginary friends a person had when they were young. I had imaginary friends when I was young and even not so young. It is probably part of being a writer. I have a crowd of characters in my head all the time that can I move about, put words in their mouths and give purpose to. I tend to flesh out those I meet via blogs and message boards that way as well. Perhaps that is why I am a bit more invested in the people I meet who don’t seem real to the real people I know?

My family roll their eyes but don’t have much to say when I talk about my “imaginary friends” though they are a bit less condescending in light of the fact that one of these people actually materialized one day and I married him. But mostly they find it odd even if it is in keeping with my character.

When I was Katy’s age, I had to hide when I played. My parents found my habit of talking to the thin air too cute and entertaining not to point out to family and friends. I try not to comment on my own child’s imaginative play as a result. I don’t even let her see me watching if I can help it. I would prefer she develop free of self-consciousness as she is inhibited enough by nature. I don’t want her to be as introverted as I am when she is grown. Some of it is just who I am, but there is a part of my reticence that could only have come from being made the butt of adult amusement when I was small. The way to draw out a shy child is not by shining a spotlight on their inner world for the entertainment of your friends.

Some of my “imaginary” friends today have had a big enough impact on my life that I reference them with my live version of friends. In the beginning I would explain how I knew them, but now I do that only if asked, and it invokes the same feeling as when I was little and my parents would interrupt my play by pointing out its quirky nature. I know now that I wasn’t odd. Most kids have unseen playmates, but to my recollection I was the only kid I knew who engaged in this kind of play openly and even preferred it to real children. This probably marked the start of my cocooning myself because I found other people’s reactions to things I said or did in all innocence hard to predict or even understand. I don’t think I am retarded, but my settings are hardwired a bit differently. It is times like these that set me to wondering about the nurture/nature thing and how much of me is a result of the chaos of my upbringing and how much I simply brought to the table with me from my unknown birthparents.

My mother was very unpredictable moodwise when I was growing up. She still is but I guess I am just used to it now and living far away has helped by blunting much of the direct impact on me. As a result, I tend to shun highly emotional people or events. Imaginary friends were an intregal part of my buffering system long ago; today I find myself need a bit of shelter from the imaginations of some of the “imaginary” people I know online. It was that way during the last months I spent on the widow board and I am finding that a few of my continued ties are wearying and even grating. I think when a person reaches a point where words must be weighed and measured in simple conversation that friendships must be reevaluated. It’s sad to grow away or past someone, even imaginary someones, but it happens.

Rearranging the Furniture


Just a little pre-spring cleaning in the form of a new blog lay-out and a tidying up of my links. I am not sure this will be my final pick for theme as I am not crazy about the color, but the lay-out is quite nice. I like having the links on the bottom.

Speaking of links, a pruning is in order. I am not sure the Widow Blog links will survive, so if you are using me as a way to store your favorite links I would suggest bookmarking them for yourself. A few will remain on my Blogs I Read, but the majority will go. I don’t see much by way of out-click traffic being generated and I myself don’t need them all. I am getting rid of widow resources entirely. Aside from my own archived posts, I feel I am moving in a direction that makes their presence here out of place. 

Another of my spring cleaning decisions is to keep only blog links that I read and comment on. This means deleting blogs from some of the other categories and adding a few new ones. When they reach a final draft, I think I will review them as well.

Finally, I am considering giving up 7 day a week blogging and just sticking with week days. It’s not as though this is a job and I am considering a writing option that is going to eat up a lot of my time and creative energy. I will discuss that in depth when I am ready to blog about my career, such as it is.

I hope you enjoy the new look and layout. Until the day comes that I have time (and inclination) to learn code, I have to rely on the ready made templates.

True housekeeping begins tomorrow.