I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the secrets about money that we keep. I’ve been carrying around this debt for almost a year and a half, and no one except my mom (and you guys) knows about it. Part of that is because I have a reputation in my family as the financially responsible one, and I don’t want to tarnish that reputation.
But there’s another reason, too: a large amount of the debt I’m about to pay off (woohoo!) is because of money I spent on my sister’s wedding. I don’t regret spending that money, but I don’t want her to find out that I had to go into debt to make her day special.
That got me thinking about my sister and me and money. My sister is one of my closest friends, one of the first people who I turn to when I need someone. I feel guilty keeping this secret from her–that’s a huge part of the reason that I can’t wait for it to be paid off–but I also remember a time that we weren’t so close.
When we were little, my sister and I were inseparable. We were best friends, always together until she went off to school, two years ahead of me. I remember being heartbroken that my best friend was leaving me to go to this new world, and even more upset when she and her “cool” friends wouldn’t let me hang out with them.
This rift in our relationship continued for a long time, well into adulthood. It wasn’t until I was about 25 or 26 that we became friends again. (As opposed to acquaintances, who put up with each other on holidays.) How we repaired that rift and became close enough that I was the first person she told when she got engaged is another story, but something else happened when I was in college that I keep remembering.
At the time, I was going to school in Manhattan, and my sister had graduated and was living and working in Brooklyn. Despite living a (relatively) short subway ride from each other, we still only saw each other once or twice a year. At the time, I was working and going to school, and had more money than I needed (though, in typical college fashion, I was spending all of it instead of saving).
When my sister moved to the city, she spent her first weekend exploring and doing the typical tourist/new to NYC things. She had started her new job already, but hadn’t gotten her first paycheck, and she found herself on that Saturday with $25 to her name and nothing to do. So…she went to a museum.
She was in the city doing something before she went to the museum, and (not knowing the city well) she decided to splurge on a cab ride to the museum. She figured she’d be able to get to the museum on $5 and that would leave her $20 for admission and grabbing something to eat on her way back to Brooklyn. When she got to the museum, sure enough, the cab meter was around $4, so she grabbed her five out of her wallet, handed it to the cab driver, and said, “Keep the change” as she jumped out of the cab.
After he drove off, she realized she’d given him her twenty dollar bill, not her five. There she was, new to the city, scared and alone and completely broke. She had no money in her checking account, no paycheck for another week. Even now as I remember it (it’s been some 8 years), I feel the horror, disappointment, and crushing loneliness that she must have felt. She called my mom, crying, who couldn’t do anything from Texas except try to comfort my sister.
My sister never told me that story.
To this day, she doesn’t know that my mom relayed it all to me. And the crazy thing is, I could have lent (or given) her money if she’d needed it. But we weren’t really friends then, we didn’t really know each other, and even now when we are friends, we don’t talk about money problems, except in general terms.
I don’t know what made me think of this, only that I’ve been feeling the weight of the secrets we keep from the people we love, especially when it comes to our finances. We put up these walls and say, “This is for you to know,” or “This is off limits.”
I think–I hope–my sister knows I would be there for her if she ever got to that point again. But I also know that sometimes all these secrets (mine and hers) seem like bricks in the walls between us. And even though we’re closer now than we were then, how close do we have to be before we’re able to share moments like these with each other?
That post struck a chord with me. My little sister and I are insanely close. Even though we live nearly an hour away from eachother, I still drive out to pick her up from school every Wednesday. We are five and a half years apart.
She means so much to me that I’m moving back to where she lives (my hometown) this summer. She’ll be 18 next summer and desperately wants out of my father’s house. She has the option of going and living with my mother, but she is afraid my father will disown her (like he did when I moved out at 18 to live with my mother). Furthermore, she’s a Jehovah’s Witness and doesn’t want to switch congregations.
I’m moving back so that when she is 18, she can move out of our father’s house, but still stay in the same community. I want to be able to provide her with a roof, help her with school, to find a job and even a car. I love her more than anything else in the world. My boyfriend has been wanting me to move in for some time and it will crush him when I move out there; it might even end our relationship. I’m willing to do that for my sister.
The problem lies in the fact that she is a Jehovah’s Witness. I’m not. I studied it for some years but ultimately decided not to get baptized and left the religion. Most of our family are Jehovah’s Witnesses (including my father and his new wife). She’ll get a flack from people for moving out of their home to live with someone who is a non-believer. She wants to move out, but these things might prevent it.
Worse, I’m afraid that at some point she’ll put space between us because I don’t believe in the religion. I don’t know if I could ever handle a rift like that.
Vix–I am so sorry that you’re faced with all of that. I know what you mean, though, about wanting to help your sister in anyway you can. Being close to my older sister (I’m not as close to my two younger ones) has been one of the truest blessings in my life.
As for the religious difference, I hope that your sister will understand that differences make people complementary to each other, and I hope she has the strength to stand up to the pressure of her community. I too have seen the damage that some religious community members can wreak on relationships with outsiders.
Hope everything works out for you! Thanks for hearing me; I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and it helps that others know what this feels like.