A Big Sister's Guide to Life: Don't chase men and other practical advice

The letter to her sister begins:

Dear Leslie,

Since you have the fortune -- or the misfortune, however you want to look at it -- to have a sister who is a writer (of sorts) you are hereby about to be gifted (?) with one of my infamous letters. To begin with -- Congratulations on having survived high school.

Sharman Stein, my longtime friend and a former Tribune reporter, was 22 when she gave that graduation gift of a letter to her 17-year-old sister, Leslie.

Sharman wrote a lot of letters to her sister, who saved them in a box that through the decades moved with her from place to place. Leslie -- her last name is Adelstein -- hadn't opened the box in years, though, until Sharman died recently of cancer at the age of 62.

"I have to share this with you," Leslie said on the phone the other day, and when I heard it I knew it deserved to be shared more widely.

Think of it as A Big Sister's Guide to Life.

I would like to tell you honestly that things get better, or at least easier. They don't. They DO get more complicated (and interesting); more dangerous (and fun) and in many cases, more ridiculous (and harder to understand). At any event, there is no way to escape it all unless you want to stay in bed tomorrow morning and never get up.

After a few more sentences, Sharman continued:

What I mean to say by way of all this trivia is that there is no way you are going to escape all the confusions, ups and downs, and difficult times ahead. NO WAY. So the only thing to do is confront it all head on -- grab it all by the mane of the lion and say okay world, here I am do what you will.

Sharman was a classic big sister. She loved to give advice. As a big sister myself, I related to the impulse, and sometimes we laughed at how overbearing big sisters could be.

But as all Sharman's friends knew, she had a talent for advice. She was practical, assertive and self-deprecating, convinced that life was hard and that you had to look for fun.

Try to tell yourself that whatever happens (and again, if you wanted the sugar coated version, forget it) most things aren't really important and only seem so at the time. Believe it or not -- this statement is the most important thing to understand and believe. If you can grasp it early on, unlike me, you will save yourself a lot of heartache.

Unlike me.

It's a deft phrase that makes it clear that her advice -- like most advice -- is a mix of experience and aspiration. She wrote:

If you can try to be a little bit silly, a little bit un-serious about most things, you will find that they will bother you less.

She then delivered a series of tips on men:

Incidentally, men are what will cause most of the problems in your life.

Her tips included:

-- Don't chase any man.

-- Always let the man know that you have a life of your own outside of your life with him. Never drop all your girlfriends and other male friends just because you are involved with someone. Don't spend all of your free time with him.

-- SEX -- I would only say this -- it should always mean something for BOTH of you. IT IS NOT WORTH IT TO DO IT WITH SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT REALLY CARE ABOUT YOU. FORGET THE MOVIES AND STUFF. ... IT IS NOT TRUE. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CASUAL SEX. SEX IS THE MOST UN-CASUAL THING A PERSON CAN DO.

The letter went on, three typed pages in all, and ended:

All my love, your big sister who can't follow her own advice!

She then appended two scribbled thoughts:

Take SCHOOL seriously. I'm counting on you to support me!

She added:

ALSO: Remember that you can always count on me.

When I read the letter, I marvel that it comes from a 22-year-old, as if some ancient, wise woman already inhabited her mind, as if she were learning from herself. Maybe we all do.

Sharman lived for 40 years after she wrote that letter. I knew her for most of them. She married Skip Sherman, an English professor, and they had two sons, Ben and Corey. She adored them all. She remained committed to working even when she was sick.

She struggled in the day-to-day ways most of us do, but she also did a good job of following some of the most important advice in A Big Sister's Guide to Life. It came down to one word:

Enjoy.

Previously:

• 06/12/18: For 13 years, 2 friends wrote letters daily. It was a love affair of poetry, separated only by death.
• 06/01/18: What would we do without our brothers?
• 05/17/18: Forget a fiddler. City woman awakens to find a goose on her roof --- and laws about removing it and her eggs
• 05/10/18: A high school senior with college dreams was paralyzed by gunfire. Two years later, he's still pushing forward
• 04/05/18: Remembering the youngest history makers
• 04/03/18: The Parable of the (Expletive Deleted) Comfort Dog
• 02/15/18: Fees, fines, loans, scams: How the poor get poorer
• 02/01/18: When Paul Simon, Daniel Day-Lewis and Elton John say 'farewell' to work they love, should we too?
• 01/25/18: At Oscars time, let's snub the snubbing
• 12/28/17: The real 2017 word of the year
• 12/20/17: The laundry-folding robots are coming
• 12/13/17: How not to waste the last days of 2017