I like mail, I do. I like ripping offers in half and half again. I like the minor power of shredding what I don't want or need, and I really enjoy shredding the credit card offers that arrive for my niece and nephew. I also like aligning my bills alphabetically, appreciating the order as if I didn't have to pay up soon enough. I don't mind paying the bills, I don't, because I think they are fair, and I really do like the order.
And so it is.
What I don't like is the newly realized responsibility of my sister and how that is reflecting in my mailbox. She's lovely, she is, but she's also a mess and although child-like, still capable of putting all sorts of power and control on my day. But, well... she's lovely. Except that there always has to be an adult (aka family member of any age) to pick up her pieces.
Since my father died, that adult is me. (With a lot of help from her daughter, I will not deny. Hi Peanut!)
In my mailbox today, a letter from the IRS. Apparently, I've been assigned an Employee Identification Number on her behalf. It does not matter that in her entire life she has worked two weeks at Jack-in-the-Box in the 70s and a four-week stint at a mall pet shop in the 90's, apparently the IRS is after her, and therefore me. I am what they call but do not define TTEE. Do you know what that means? I haven't a clue.
It does not matter that I am not an employer. What matters to me is that in their mind (and hers, mind you), I owe an enormous amount of back taxes and WHEN WILL I PAY?
It's comical, this is.
Are you laughing? I am. Well, not true. But I am trying. I do see that it is funny, but seriously, there's one crack in the joke, and that's the fact that this official letter from the ever-so-serious IRS has listed not one but two of her ex-husbands and, by process of elimination, landed on me. At my home address. One of those two, ahem, bastards, is responsible for this but now I have suddenly become employer and owe back taxes? No one can say the IRS is not determined.
Between us, I know it's laughable, but I still don't like my name on the list.
At all.
I do take it seriously, this letter sitting beside me, in all its archaic courier font and one-inch margins on plain white paper. My name is on it, after all. Matters not that there are three names beneath my own, my name is on top.
When I think about what tires me, it's not what chews at my mind and rewrites my thoughts, not what sits in my heart and rewrites my hope, and it's not dreams changed or loves lost, it's the familiarity of moments like these, moments that come out of the dark and with all their Boooyaaaa voices that momentarily paralyze me. It's the moments that are so small yet so loud and insistent, like she is. Moments that consistently interrupt and cut in line, and demand to be dealt with right now. No matter what I am doing, or where I am, or even if I left her house five minutes ago.
It's these moments that turn me around.
5 comments:
I'm glad you still love her and can still laugh about these things. For my own emotional sanity, I had to separate myself from my sister more than ten years ago. She called me last year, out of the blue, hadn't spoken to her since my wedding in 2002. For her it was like we had spoken the day before. For me it was like talking to a stranger and I knew she no longer had any power over me. I'm so glad for you that you still have reasons to love your sister. Carmon
You helped me to feel "not so alone", thank you. Since dad died, I have been picking up where he left off. No one else will do it but me. She just recently cut me off again, but I can't stop loving. I never would have guessed this would be part of my future.
hey alison. just wantefd to let you know im outta touch this week, but ill be back to catch up next monday. hope alls well. i do so hate the irs.
Girl, you really DO need a vacation! Your plate is full to overflowing. Enjoy yourself, relax, have fun. You'll come back energized and ready to start over.
Jack-in-the-Box, huh? Could that explain your sister's ability to pop up when you least expect it? I'd say your vacation is coming along just in the nick of time.
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