More than anything else...

From the time I became aware of others around me to my late-ish 30s, the thing I wanted more than anything else was for Mim to be a sister to me. In my late 30s, it was made abundantly clear that would never happen & I came to content with being as good a sister to Mim as was possible.

One of the things that I admired so much in Mim, a trait that I was utterly wretched at, was paying her bills on time & contributing to worthy causes.  She was a master at both.  Gillian Mayer told me that Mim was always one of the very first to get her Theta Alpha dues in;  Ivyland will miss getting her annual check.  Not a lot, $10 or so, but every year.  

That quality was one of many that I longed to emulate, but couldn't get the hang of.  When I turned to her, asked her to mentor me on money, she wouldn't.  

Well, I am going to reframe her original answer to, "Figure it out for yourself."  I know that Ivyland meant a lot to Mim ever since it's first fledgling start in Hatboro.  It floored me to hear about the TAI dues - who knew?  Mim knew what mattered to her & supported them, in spite of having very little money.

Which groups & organizations matter to me?  The Bryn Athyn Church, the Academy schools, Kitty Kottage, Theta Alpha, Feasterville Fire Company, Rowe Conference Center, Omega.  That's a start.  

Mim had the remarkable gift for more than connection - she knew how to develop nurture maintain relationship.  It's clear from Gillian, from Alaine, that she knew how to do that with organizations as well as individuals.  What a dork I was, not just figuring it out for myself, which is what she might have meant in the first place!  

"If it matters, you will figure it out.  If you don't, it doesn't."  - Mim didn't say that, but she could have!  And she would have been right.

What I'm realizing, as the days roll on after Mim's death, is how much an enigma I am to myself.  Even after I stopped want to BE Mim (as I hear her described by person after person, what younger sister wouldn't want to be her?), it's been a struggle figuring out who the heck I am.  It's not that I'm a faint shadow of Mim, a 5th generation copy, but that I'm pretty rudderless defining my self for myself.  I am, to me, still more the sum total of what I'm not rather than what I am.  And that has got to stop.  It matters, so I've got to figure it out.