Things I do to keep in touch

I really broke away from home, first for higher education and then having a nice career. My family is full of different personalities, both of my sisters have different careers and educational paths or backgrounds, and we just do not mix business and pleasure. Math, science, and fashion being so different, we all have common interests in cooking and special passions or talking about fun things. There is just such a huge difference between all of us in our serious lives. I never made my sisters listen to me talk about my work or academic life, we never talk about money either. When we have time with each other it is for pleasure, it really needs to strictly be for pleasure. Once I left home, I never really felt myself returning to the area, but there are such awesome ways to keep in touch with my family when I am gone. Even though we are all separate, I hope five years from now we still talk for ten minutes a week and visit each other once in a blue moon.

My favorite ways to keep in touch are,

• Calling everyone on a Saturday.

• Cooking together, virtually with google nest.

• Having a planned weekend together.

• Running races together or virtually.

• Sending greeting cards, and hats I knitted in the mail.

• Gifting crafts and poetry.

It really is possible to go completely separate ways from your family, and maintain a healthy relationship. If I know my sister is running a race, I can send her encouraging texts the entire race, even if we are in two different places. Being off living my life and calling them ten minutes a week keeps me happy, I loved having my own apartment and being off as soon as that happened for me.

I wrote this poem for my sisters, and they liked it a lot.

“Sister, sister
If you need to dance, go dance, pretty girl.
I want to see you, leap, plié, and whirl.
Perhaps, put on your power suit with heels.
Science super woman ruling world, feels.

We can run together or run apart.
We either connect or need a fresh start.
We are so smart; we are on different paths.
Sisters both love lots, and sometimes have wraths.

You are the incessant lights of my life.
When we fight, we all go straight for the knife.
Prodigious and abysmal is our love.
We set each other free, just like a dove.

Energy comes off you with just a look.
In-between lines, I read you like a book.
The sixth sense that we can never ignore.
I know when you are there, at the door.

Sister, sister, in different places.
Thoughts in our brains fill up the same spaces.
We cannot disconnect from each other.
All animosity, love will smother.
”