A Conversation

 by Linda Carter

“I don’t really get the liberal, conservative thing,” my sister remarked.

“I have always been pretty conservative in the way I dress, talk, raise my kids and live my life. But, because I could care less whether two people of the same sex get married I am considered a “liberal.” She shook her head.

Ten years older than I am, my sister Kathy has always shown caution. She passed on pot and rarely drank. She did tell me she got drunk on gin her first year in college and passed out in somebody’s bathtub. It’s one of the reasons I still speak to her. Without that story, our histories look like a comparison between Mother Teresa and Charlie Sheen.

When it comes to politics, we never talked about it much. We were raised in a working class family of Democrats who benefited from the work of unions and believed in education.

My parents dropped out of high school to go to work, but they made sure all five of their kids got their high school diplomas.

My father loved to read. I remember devouring Louis L'Amour books, True Detective magazines and of course the bible of the lower class, the Reader’s Digest.

My mother loved to play with language and would often mispronounce words to see if I was paying attention. She loved music and the radio and we listened together.

Most families I knew were living paycheck to paycheck. A few doctors, lawyers and business owners had it better, but the discrepancy in wealth wasn’t as enormous as it is today.

Here’s the bottom line. Labels confine us and separate us.

And death collects us all.

Linda Carter

© 2015