My sister has not visited me in 17 years.

That coincides with the birth of my son, her only nephew.

During that time we have never lived in the same state. She lived in CA, I lived in Hawaii. She lived in CA, I lived in Texas. She lived in CA, I moved back to Hawaii. The last time she visited me was at my wedding on Kauai 18 years ago.

Since my son was born I made it a point to travel back to see the family in CA once a year and pretty much stuck to that until he got older. My father always made a point to fly out and visit us, wherever we lived. But my sister, not so much. I wonder why?

She had the money. For 15 of those years she was making twice as much money as me and she had no children. During those years she travelled to Colorado, and Maui and Texas and Boston, but somehow never managed to stop in and visit me. She went to Cancun and Scotland but never did stop in and visit me. When I lived in Fort Worth 10 years ago she had a business trip to Dallas. She flew in, went to her meetings, and flew out without visiting me, living 25 miles away. My father mentioned her trip to me in passing without thinking. I was absolutely dumbstruck. I called her and left a message and emailed her and asked, "Why wouldn't you visit me when you were just here 25 miles away?" She sent me a scathing email telling me she was very busy and didn't have time. And we didn't talk for a year after that. Though her husband did manage to send me a scathing email also pretty much telling me to shut up. [He turned out to be an alcoholic, adulterer, pathological liar but that's another story]. My father weakly tried to defend her. My hurt feelings were visible.

My sister has no other nieces or nephews except for my son, who will be turning 17 in July. She would never have seen him except for me flying in to CA to re-introduce him to the family on a mostly annual basis.

A year ago I asked her to please come visit me in Hawaii. All she needed was plane fare, staying with us for free and using our car(s). She tenatively scheduled a trip then emailed me to say, no, she couldn't afford it, she wouldn't be making it. That was last June.

And now I am planning a trip to - guess where? - California to visit the family in July. I'm making the reservations and paying the fare [$1200 thank you very much] and she told me I could stay at her house and maybe my son can stay at my fathers and it was all very nice. Until the other night I was in bed and sat straight up and said, "My sister hasn't visited me in 17 years!"

And since I started blogging on O.S. in January I have emailed her several of my blogs and asked her to just save my blog site in her favorites and give it a check once a week for maybe 5 minutes. You know, read a post and let me know what she thinks. And you know what? She hasn't done that. She has not carved out 10 minutes a week to read what I write. And I know that because I use the STAT counter and her town conspiculously never shows up as having been to my site.

And when I call her and she doesn't answer her phone, I leave a nice message. "Hey there, can you give me a call back when you have a chance?" And mostly, she doesn't.

Is she busier than me? Not by a long shot. I am married, a mother, I work full time. She is divorced, no kids, works part time. Perhaps she could just sit down and call me? Or check out my blog? Or plan a trip to Hawaii?

And so I plan my next trip to California and know I have to forgive my sister before I land. I'm not sure how I'm going to go about it yet. I'm sure this is about our family and deep seated issues and yes, sibling rivalry.

Or maybe she's just not that into me.