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CAMEO

My Favorite Gemini

By Denise E LindquistPublished 3 years ago Updated 12 months ago 11 min read
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I am not a horoscope person. I do know I am a Capricorn and my husband is a Pisces and we are compatible. I know a little bit more but not much. So, why am I even writing for this topic? Intriguing is what it is, all that super this and super that, warm and generous.

I love it. I always knew my sister was a super woman and I thought that it may be enough to write all about her as a Gemini super star, a quick witted, intellectually inclined woman, who knew everybody and even some somebody’s.

I like that the description says super curious, rather than nosey. The description says “Gemini: Latin for "twins," is the third astrological sign in the zodiac, originating from the constellation of Gemini.

A positive, mutable sign, if you were born May 21 to June 21, your ruling planet is Mercury, and you're likely super-fast, super-smart, super-adaptable, and super-curious. Intellectually inclined, these quick-witted twins can talk to anyone about anything.

Geminis are an air sign and possess a warm, generous nature. 👭” By this description I know my sister was one!! Yes, I mean was one. My sister Carrie was born June 20, 1957 and died on September 25, 2010.

When Carrie was a young teen, she took off and joined a hippy commune. At least that is what our mother told me. When mom found out where she was, she went after her. Her friends were always my age and older, even though she was three years younger than me.

Carrie always knew everyone. And that was true the summer she came to stay with me and my husband in Circle Montana. We didn’t know anyone when she arrived and when she left, we knew more people than we cared to know.

After that she was sent to an art high school in New Mexico where she completed two years of high school and two years of college. She met and married her husband and they had two children while there.

She died from Leukemia at fifty-three, much too young I thought. I preferred to think of her as having gone back to New Mexico, where she lived when her children were small or Arizona, where she attended graduate school.

I would think that often until a friend called me and asked me to attend her younger brother’s funeral. She said, “I thought you could help me through this as you appear to be handling your sister’s death so well.” I did not want to go and did not feel I was handling anything well and still I went.

I was thinking, well maybe I can help her and, in that way, help me. I am not sure that I was any help for her, and I do know I was helped. Her brother was so young and did so much in the short life he lived and halfway through his service, I started to realize just how full my sister’s life was.

By the time I left that funeral, I knew that my sister had lived more life than I ever will, even if I were to live to be twice her age or 106, I will not get as much living in as she did.

Carrie or CAMEO, Carrie Ann Marie Estey Ortiz was the names she used. As a child everyone called her Corky. As an adult she hated that name, coming from almost anyone but our cousin Faith. A Cameo is a “small character part in a play or movie.

A Cameo is played by a distinguished actor or a celebrity.” That is how I prefer to think of her life. She was a celebrity, with a small part in a play. It did not last long enough, and it was good to see her, and you always wanted to spend more time with her.

Like the Gemini, Natalie Portman my sister could win a Best Actress award from family and close friends. We all knew there were different sides to our Carrie and as an artist, we knew of her abilities to write, direct, produce, act and she could put a good cast together for a great performance.

All she had to say to me was, “can you sit on stage on a toilet, with your pants around your ankles? I remember that cute picture of you on the potty chair”. And she had me, although later I thought, am I crazy? I acted in that college play with all her friends that were cast by her to act in.

The play was called “Rez Sisters” by Tomson Highway. It was a blast and as the cast from Rez Sisters, we became sisters in real life. The director told us that we were the best cast he had ever directed and that was thanks to Carrie.

My sister did not know her value. She was not going to get rich. She sold her art for pennies when I thought it was worth thousands. I predict most Gemini’s do not know their worth. Carrie was so generous, that when my daughter graduated from high school, she bought the food for the open house.

When speaking of our culture, I would give this as an example about how close the family relationships are, when others would say, our family is like that too. Most could not relate to that example. Carrie grew up knowing that her kids were mine and mine were hers.

It is tough to try to pick up even some of what she left behind. I inherited her sister friends when she died. I try to be there for her children. I have not done much though and I am aware that no one can do what Carrie did. Carrie knew everyone and something special about them. Not just gossip, rather she knew the goodness in each person.

In love, my sister was faithful to her children’s father. She loved that man and was with him for most of her life. I told her that I had heard marriages sometimes do not survive graduate school after mine failed. She went anyway.

She loved her husband to the end, even though she was no longer married to him, and he had remarried. I could tell. And even though there were other men in her life, it was never the same. Her and her children’s father grew up together.

If Carrie lived longer, I would have liked seeing her with someone who adored her and all that she could do in the world. Allowing her to be the woman she was meant to be. Not holding her back in any way. The love interests of Gemini are Leo’s, who some say are Gemini’s soulmates. Others are, Aries, Libra, and Aquarius.

As a Gemini, you may relate to some of the gifts my sister shared with others. She was an artist, a teacher, a healer. She was good at whatever she did. She helped to bring back woodland pottery to Minnesota. She was involved in several plays, with Native American writers, actors, and directors.

She helped me with fundraisers by donating her art. She had several art shows and would always ask me for some of my art that she had given me over the years to display. Not to sell as she was always so busy, she needed mine just to complete her show.

And she could cook and put on the best feed in little to no time at all. It appeared that it took little to no effort. She made the best chili, tortillas and tamales.

When I said she could do anything it was because once when she knew I wanted new flooring in my bathroom she said, we can get it done. It took us a part of a day to purchase materials, rent a tile cutter and do the project and it still looks good some fifteen years later.

I would have never done it on my own. It was my sister that could do anything, not me. Another time, I was making faceless dolls for my daughter and granddaughters, and I asked her for help and she said, “yes, I will write a list.”

We picked up materials and got started right away. She made moccasins, complete with bead work and attached the hair and braided their hair. She was great. I really believed she could do anything. Her garden was always the best. If she needed cash, she would make something to sell.

She was good friends with other gifted people and could call on them when she needed a favor.

A friend was talking about how excited her sister was to see Keith Secola in concert, and she was going on and on about how he was from the range you know and how his show was cancelled due to the pandemic and now she gets to go. I told her he was a friend of my sister.

My friend said her sister mentioned an Indian woman that came up and performed with him at the last concert she had attended and my friend wondered if that was maybe my sister. So I told her my sister invited him to do a show at a museum where she was the Director.

My sister was known to request Kaw-Liga and dance to his music and she was pretty good. I sent this friend a picture of my sister with Keith Secola and Jim Northrup, the writer. I was reading one of his books and found her name in there. They were good friends too. She was friends with many other famous people too, but enough name dropping.

Carrie was comfortable with her knowledge of our culture and herself. I could go on and on about what she taught me. I won't. In her art she would add a person to her pieces that you couldn't really tell if they were men or women and she would refer to them as he/she's.

She added figures to her sculptures and her paintings and pottery. I always thought it was so cool and related this to her especially as she had so many qualities that resembled the he/she acceptance of our ancestors and the culture. Dual/twin roles of some of our finest.

I was struggling with my employment and was going to a meeting and let her know I was scared, and she told me, “Before you go in brush your shoulders off. When you come out spit.” I don’t know why, and I never asked but that worked, and I’ve used it a few more times since.

She told me at a naming ceremony for a friend’s grandson as she was doing the ceremony and naming the boy, that it is okay for us to name our own. She said, “some people will tell you that it isn’t okay. The Creator told us we can, and our auntie named us.

Just know that there are culture cops out there now and you can go by the Creator or a spiritual leader that you believe in and you don’t have to listen to the culture cops”.

This is an example from a couple years ago when a young girl scooted up to me and said, “carry the water in your left hand” I said, “do you know why?" She said no. I then told her "It is because your heart is on your left side, making the water closer to your heart."

Then I said, "I am giving the water reiki in my two hands, so I will carry it different." I told her that the lesson was meant for her, and she probably does not have to share it with any old women."

Carrie and I learned reiki in 1994 and gave reiki to others up until two months before she died. She was telling me that she asked a good friend what they would do if they knew they only had a short time to live.

She said that her friend told her they would visit all the places they wanted to see and all the people they wanted to see that were special to them and that is what she did.

As she lay dying and at her funeral several people told me that they had just seen Carrie two weeks ago, or even just last week and she was doing so well. I knew she wasn't feeling well at our last Minnesota American Indian Institute of Alcohol and Drug Studies (MAIIADS) gig and told her to get to her doctor.

She had one scheduled. When we had a chance a few of us gave Carrie reiki. The Bos radio blew. The next day the massage therapist blamed us for blowing out her Bos. I said, if we can break it, we can probably fix it and we did. Carrie needed that kind of support to do what she wanted to do before she died.

Carrie lived her life as a Gemini and she was super-fast, super-smart, super-adaptable, super-curious and all around super. All other Gemini’s listen up as you are lucky to be the super men and women that you are. I want you all to know that you are worthy of your own warm and generous nature. And I am here to tell you, that you are more valuable than you will ever know.

siblings
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About the Creator

Denise E Lindquist

I am married with 7 children, 27 grands, and 12 great-grandchildren. I am a culture consultant part-time. I write A Poem a Day in February for 8 years now. I wrote 4 - 50,000 word stories in NaNoWriMo. I write on Vocal/Medium weekly.

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