Dear Sister,

Summer has come on fast and it’s hot in the valley. I read outside by my pool, already splash marks on the pages of Swann’s Way though I’ve only just begun. Sky runs full speed across the hot cement till her feet burn. Chlorine skin. I drink too much iced coffee to quell the high-pitched screeches of little girl laughter, turning seamlessly to tears, and back again.
Wet paged books remind me of our childhood, reading on the boat, the dock, in the hot tub. Do you remember that time? Our parents’ tenderness as important as Proust’s kiss from his mother. Falling asleep with the sweet angst of all we didn’t yet know about our lives and the world. Can you imagine a time before regrets, before failure and unkindness, before great loss? When I look at three-year-old Sky, I can see that we all begin so pure. That this perfection is always within us. Though, at times, it may feel lost.

Proust is tedious already, no doubt, with sentences that carry on for pages. I find myself losing the trail and having to go back. Still, Proust pulls on me, grasping adrift pieces within. Like on page 23, when the main character (does he have a name yet?) says, “We pack the physical outline of the person we see with all the notions we have already formed about him.” He talks of Swann, the way he looked when the narrator was a child and knew so little, versus the way Swann looks years later, when, presumably, the narrator knows much more. I see people in this way too. I can remember the way that certain people looked when I first saw them, and the way they changed once I knew them. Often, softening into beauty, though sometimes, with a rare dislikable person, morphing into something ugly and obscene.

Sometimes, when I hadn’t seen you in years, I would get so anxious. As if you might have become something monstrous that I wouldn’t recognize. But then, upon finally seeing you in some parking lot or casino or hovel, I always felt a great relief. Thinking: Yes, thank goodness, my sister – all the versions I’ve known, from infant, to child, to beautiful tortured woman. I always loved you. Even before you entered this world. Even during the times when you couldn’t love me back.

It’s hard to say what makes a great piece of writing, and yet, as lifelong readers, when we see one, we know. We’ve always agreed on art. It connects us. Though we are in such different places in our lives right now, both physically and metaphysically, I am grateful that we can read Proust’s novel, together. Find ourselves inside of it. And maybe find each other too.

Love always,

C.