She is four years younger than me. An age differential sufficient to ensure that as children our interests were far enough apart that we had never developed a common focus on much of anything and our emotional attachment never ran very deep. It's hard to say whose fault that was, if fault can be attributed to anyone. For me, she was just there, hardly to be noticed, a sibling, younger than me and of little importance to my life.

When we became older the bonds of sisterhood never did quite jell. We were remotely aware of each other's existence, but I was married at age 18 and removed physically and emotionally to an entirely different landscape in time and emerging adulthood. By the time I'd had all three of our children, my sister had met the man who would become her husband. Our visits back and forth to one another's families were not frequent. That emotional detachment was simply part of our lives, as sisters. A warmth that likely is a commonplace between sisters was not part of our relationship.

My sister had health problems that I knew of and felt badly about; principally that a botched forceps delivery at birth had left her with fragile eyesight, that continually but gradually deteriorated to the point where at age 50, she was declared legally blind. She does have some eyesight, and with the use of a number of devices she obtained through the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, she is capable of coping very well with an extremely diminished sight capability.

She loves animals, mostly cats and rabbits, and keeps both. Her children are similarly given to bringing felines into their homes. She is committed to their well-being, taking in strays or feral cats when they can be cornered, to have them neutered and a home found for them. But her real joy in life, in her struggle to overcome depression is dancing. Square dancing, line dancing, ballroom dancing; it hardly matters which form of that physical expression of animated social activity, it brings her as close to the ecstasy of appreciating life as anything ever did. And now it represents almost her sole source of gladness in life.

When we speak over the telephone, we enquire first and foremost about family members and bring one another up to date on that vital connection. We graduate eventually to speaking of current affairs and politics, and there is as much to debate in those two areas of civic and international life as of the affairs of family. We don't always agree about politics, but find a common frame of reference in our views and values of life, springing a kind of relief mechanism in speaking the same language of care and responsibility.

She is, after all, my sister.