And I don't even like the Stones!

My kid sister -- who hurt me badly and more than once over the past 30 days -- recently posted on FB that she really wants to give her husband tickets to see the Rolling Stones at the United Center this May, but after waiting online for hours, the only seats available on Ticketmaster were $1,245 ea. Without even thinking, I responded that she should go to StubHub. American Express cardholders who aren't really fans always take advantage of the presale for events like this and then resell their tickets for a profit. A few minutes later, my niece endorsed my idea, saying seats were $270 ea. on there. (They're even cheaper now -- such are the ways of StubHub.)

My helping her seemed to matter a great deal to my sister. The tone of her emails about our mother's final affairs softened considerably. But I did it reflexively. I don't really like the Rolling Stones and right now I certainly don't like my sister. I'm scrolling down FB, someone needs information or help, I can give it, consider it done. No big deal. And yet, under the circumstances, to my kid sister it was.

I've known her since before she was born, and yet she doesn't know me at all.

While I'm glad that she no longer feels we are at war, it doesn't make me like her any better.

This has changed me.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but since my mother died I have come to grasp something that my shrink used to tell me -- my nuclear family never did not see me as I am, nor did it ever appreciate me as I am. Looked at through their funhouse prism, I am the one who is too different, too edgy, too unconventional. Compared to what? Compared to them.

This is something my shrink has tried to tell me for years, but I just now get it. I'm 55, and I just now get it: Just because someone says something about me doesn't make it true.