A few months ago, I told my sister Jane that our family had long ago given up asking each other for anything, I said people who love one another need to ask for things, and a few weeks ago she called up and said she had been thinking about that and had something she wanted to ask me: would I come and visit her over the Christmas holiday?

My sister and I have always had a close and powerful connection, we clung to one another through some very terrible times, but life has pulled us apart, we have only seen each other a few times in the past 20 or 30 years. Jane never asks anything of me, nor I of her, she often tells me she doesn’t buy hard-cover books.

I wanted to come and see her, I was grateful for the invitation, Saturday Maria and I drove out to Western New York where Jane lives on six acres in an area much remote than my part of upstate New York, she has a small split level house and lives with six dogs – three Newfoundlands, two Leonbergers and a black mixed-breed rescue dog.  Leonbergers and Newfoundlands are big, hairy things, huge and lumbering. They floated up and down stairs and across rooms like ethereal beings, quiet and self-possessed, as huge animals often are, there is little to challenge or threaten them.

When I saw my sister at breakfast this morning, I told her I sometimes wondered if we were completely alike or completely different, and she laughed and said perhaps a little bit of each. Perhaps so. We have taken different paths, but that does not always make us different.

Jane and I started in the same place, but ended up in different places, yet….perhaps not so different as I might think. We both changed our lives relatively late in life, set out in very new and radically different directions. I set off to write about animals and rural life, was on the hero journey to figure out who I really was and wanted to be. Jane moved farther west than I did and also chose to live a life with animals. At first, she got some donkeys, chickens and goats as well as dogs, then narrowed her animals down to rescue and purebred dogs, she had “heart” puppies, puppies doomed to die from arterial disease, lately she has taken up breeding Newfoundlands.  Her life centers around her big and beautiful dogs, she talks to them, revels in them, brags of them.

Jane chose her house because it is good for dogs, every room is designed for their consideration, she built three huge fenced-in running and kennel areas for her dogs, she has a dog door on just about every door leading in and out of the main floor and the basement.  Visiting the house, I saw quickly that it is not a house with dogs, it is a dog house, the point is the dogs. The dogs are welcome on beds and sofas, the house has been arranged almost entirely for them, mats everywhere, open spaces cleared, visitors have to squeeze themselves onto rumpled and smelly sofas, if the dogs haven’t beaten them to it. The dogs can go outside and come in wherever they wish, and go anyplace in the house they wish as well. They move like a school of manatees, large, dark, quiet, there is a pond for them to swim in right down from the house.

I was overwhelmed by these gentle giants, they are big, affectionate, smelly, drooling and curious. They were used to being on laps, they were constantly trying to climb onto ours, they drooled and licked. Then they settle, like big mystical creatures.

Jane feeds her dogs raw diets only, she can recite the birth and death of every one of her dogs. Breakfast this morning was fish oil, beef hearts, ground beef (she meets a supplier every few months at a New York State Thruway rest stop), turkey liver, chicken neck, coconut oil prepared individually, served in bowls.  The people had steel-cut oatmeal.  Jane’s life is filled with breeding dramas and trials, animal rescues, horrific surgeries and recoveries.

We watched TV last night, a Disney movie about an adopted Chimpanzee, and a Monty Python video, it was warm and surreal in the dark room, humidifiers spouting mist,  the big lumbering dogs coming up one by one, licking my hands and legs, trying to climb into my lap and Maria’s, the big HD screen taking us deep into the jungle.

Dogs and animals are a part of my life, too, but it is different, they are not as central to me, much as I love them, they are a part of my life, not my whole life. I flirted for a bit with a life on Bedlam Farm just with me and animals, but I always knew what I was really looking for, even before a bunch of therapists reminded me.

Jane has made a profound choice in her life, I think she had quite enough of people, and was drawn to the love and trust of dogs, and I saw that for me and for her, the visit was about acceptance, we have always loved and cared for one another, we share a powerful experience, a bond that can never be broken. As close as we were as children, it has always been difficult for us to accept one another as adults, I think we are getting there, the thing is not to quit.

Jane is a brave, strong, ferociously independent and loving human being, I see so much love pouring out of her for her dogs, she simply lights up at the sight of each one of them, never minds being snuggled, bumped, licked and nuzzled, she cannot do enough for them. In her life, she has suffered much and struggled much, she is ready for peace and meaning on her own terms.

And she is happy for me, too, I think, she and Maria were so easy with one another. I found that the love in me needed a human outlet, that is what I always wanted, that is, in a way, where my dogs led me, they showed me how to love, I think, until I could find what I felt in  my heart was the real thing – Maria. Perhaps this is the real message of my family, so my love looking for a place to live, to be.

I was unnerved at first during this visit,  I felt overwhelmed by these dogs, they are huge and take up almost all of the space in the house. Jane loves her dogs so much she can’t quite comprehend my discomfort, I’m not sure she even saw it. I don’t think I could live with them in my small farmhouse or any house, it was simply too much for me in that small space. But it is not too much for Jane, and it has worked well and happily for her,  there are many people reading this post who will understand her life as well or better than me, and relate to its deep meaning. It is a pure life with animals, this house is about her and them. A love of unconditional love and nurture. A life where trust and connection can put down roots and grow again. I’m not sure I can do that, not even a brother, not even a witness.

On this visit, discomfort and wariness gave way to acceptance, I appreciate the great love and heart in my sister, I admire her courage in setting out to find the life she wanted, she has a bad knee and poor sight in one eye, nothing seems to slow or deter her, and she lives  without apology or explanation, sorry for her mistakes, determined to move ahead. “Are you okay about visiting”,” she asked me, “sure, I said, I’m okay.”

It was not a simple visit, it never is, it never can be. We are learning to get comfortable with one another, it only took us about a half-century. I gave Jane a pile of books and I hope to visit her again soon. Acceptance is a growing notion in my mind these days, I think it is the pathway to true love, knowledge, peace of mind, a spiritual life, of the beginning of an, understanding of what it means to be a human being and to live a human life.

Jane and I share an unbreakable connection, we are sacred witnesses to one another’s lives, for all of our worries and twists and turns and judgements, here we are, after all this time, brother and sister, bound in the great dance. It was always there.