Secret Faith.

When she was little, my sister used to go to a Gurudwara in secret on her way to school every day. We weren't raised in a particularly religious household, at least, in that we were not taught a faith-based morality and everyone was free to believe or not believe. My mother is a woman of faith but it would be hard to determine which faith she practises. She was born to a Hindu family, in a part of the country where the practise of Buddhism is prevalent, she married a Sikh man whose family had long-ago converted to Sikhism and she worships at any altar. Or at no altar at all. She worships all the time but neither in the form of beseeching prayer nor offerings to God. Her faith is extremely private and completely non-prescriptive. For all her faults, I can say with confidence, my mother has never used the threat of God to teach societal or personal morality to anyone. She finds the public display of faith, distasteful. She believes that if you must have any kind of relationship at all with God, it must be the most private one you have and anything you do within the purview of that relationship, whether charity or prayer, must be as secret as possible. 

I tell you that to explain why my sister was going to the Gurudwara in secret. She had generalised anxiety that was quite severe. She went to God, like many of us do, because she was out of spaces where she could find solutions or peace and a leap of faith seemed like the right answer to her (as it can be to some people). In the Gurudwara, she didn't really pray nor did she talk to anyone, she just sat in the prayer hall for a few minutes, took some *halva* on the way out and went to school. She found that it helped her to start her day over there and because of the way my mother practised her faith, she was sure she wasn't supposed to tell anyone that she was stopping there every day on the way to school. So, she didn't. 

We found out because the granthi (a Sikh priest?) called my mother one morning. My sister had left for school as usual with the driver and stopped at the Gurudwara, but the car wouldn't start back up after she was done with her morning dosage of God-sanctioned sugar (so it's not dessert, it's sweet treats without calories or consequences, blessings be upon the human mind and what we can do with symbolism) and the driver had gone away without telling her to find someone to repair the car. She had an exam and my sister is most anxious around exams (and probably even now). The *granthi* who saw her everyday noticed her prancing around perturbed and inquired as to the problem. Then he summoned half of the Gurudwara staff and they resolved to get this little girl to school in an old truck they used to deliver food to people who were food-insecure, but they had to inform the parents that they were doing that so they called to tell my mom. 

That story is very important to me. 

My sister isn't the kind of person who would stop at temple on the way to school, she is the type of person who would stop at the candy store. My sister is also like a child to me and at that time, I had only recently left my home and moved away, I was very young too, and she was teenager. She hadn't been alone in the world without me ever before and more importantly she had never been in our home without me either and that was where she needed most protection. I worried incessantly that my absence meant that something terrible would happen to her or that she would need my help and I wouldn't be there. Don't worry, though, I didn't find relief in the idea that God would look out for her. Come on. 

No. 

This story was the first time I got information about my sister that surprised me and even more surprising was that she hadn't discussed it with me or told me that she had been going to a temple. That may sound like that should make me feel bad, but it was the opposite. I realised that she had grown up and I felt the relief of being able to shift into a version of our relationship where we could both be a support system to one another, as opposed to me being completely responsible for her. She had a problem, we had been supporting her in dealing with her anxiety for a while, but she found a solution on her own that she wanted to implement without the involvement of other people. She took that space and it was a wonderful way of telling us that she was ready to make decisions for herself. Maybe this was aided by the fact that we keep faith a secret in my family but it created the perfect environment for me to see my little sister as an individual who would do what was right for her. The fact that she was out in the world, needed help and found help was just a well-timed reassurance that I had left her in a world where she could be okay. A world where she may need to confront problems by herself every now and then, and she could. 

My favourite thing about caregiver-recepient relationships is the transition to this phase where caregiving or responsibility is not the primary purview of one person. Whether that happens in my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my sisters, my sisters' relationships with one another or my relationship with my kid, it will happen in most relationships of this nature. The individual who has been raised, nurtured, looked-after or patented will reach a place where they are ready to be less managed or a space where they don't need you as much to help them, and the individual who has done the raising, has to come to a place where they accept that are not needed to do all of this anymore, and they have to demonstrate a level of trust in the individuality and a level of respect for the autonomy of this person to give them the space to own their lives completely even when it doesn't adhere to what you think you taught them. I think this is the most beautiful phase of relationships, when we all become adults to one another. My relationships with my sisters were wonderful when they were kids, but they only got better as we all got older because no one is continually raising anyone else. There is an expiration date on the responsibility of being older or in a role of responsibility. I love when that day comes because that day I get to start learning you as a person outside of my influence in many ways. 

The day my sister got a ride to school from a granthi was that day for me. 

And now she is getting married. 

In that Gurudwara.  

Marriage means nothing to me, but it seems to mean something to my sister and the fact that every single person in my family independently came to the decision that the wedding should take place in the Gurudwara does mean something to me. I don't know what. Whimsy? Nostalgia? An attempt to recapture a moment gone by? The realisation that we all attached meaning to that one moment and a symbol of God stands on those coordinates? The irony of a ceremony so public taking place in a space she only wanted to visit in secret and private? 

All of it. 

None of it. 

It doesn't matter. I am just so thrilled my sister found love that means so much to her. (And that I actually like him, because you should have seen the men who came before him.)