Sisters & Maybe Friends

My youngest sister's name was changed when she was adopted. 

It was then that she became Marietta.

She went through life never knowing about our parents. Or her other siblings. Or me.

But now we're learning some very unique things about one another.

Marietta keeps to herself. She is surrounded by her beloved pets. She prefers their company to that of humans. 

She says she always speaks her mind. She tends to be blunt, to say what she thinks when she thinks it.

She admits to always being uncomfortable around people, and to being socially awkward. Still feels that way.

She says she was a social outcast as a child. She was different. Not better than. Not less than. 

Just different.

In first grade, Marietta read on a 12th grade level. She received an "A" in Speed Reading.

Proper grammar is important to her. She's excels at spelling.

She has told me that in the last few years, she has wondered if there is some degree of savant skills in her brain function. 

These last few years, though, things have become harder for her, due to MS. Things take longer than they once did. 

With her specific MS, the plague lesions are on her brain instead of her spinal cord. She says it causes cognitive functions to go awry.

The last couple of weeks I have learned more about her than I would have known in a lifetime, had she not taken one of those ancestry DNA tests. 
 

I am fascinated by all these traits she has. Because it sounds so very much like someone I know.

I wonder if this is happenstance. But somehow I just don't think so.

Marietta had a history she knew nothing about. And a past she wished she never knew at all.

We can think about "if onlys" till the cows come home. But that won't change anything.  

We can only take this very day we're given, and make what we can of it.

I don't claim to understand why things happen the way they do. I just roll with the tide and hope to live to see another day. And maybe another one after that. 

Somehow I've been given this gift, suddenly, of someone who shares my blood. And possibly much, much more. 

Which for some reason brings to mind a quote I've always loved by Robert Frost. It goes like this:

"We dance round in a ring and suppose,
 But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."