Ode to My Baby Sister

Having a baby sister has its pros and cons…I see this even more clearly now that I have my own children. The youngest gets cut a lot of slack, but they also get the most hand-me-downs. My baby sister came along a little over a year after I was born, so of course our parents thought we’d be fast friends from day one. In reality, I don’t remember a time without her there. I have early memories of looking out of my crib and seeing that adorable sleeping baby in the crib across the room. Actually, I don’t recall thinking anything, all I have in my brain is a picture of her…so my adult self thinks, “beautiful baby” whereas I was probably thinking some baby version of INTERLOPER!  I could see that she was the baby, not me, so I figured out how to stick my hand down to the latch and drop the side of my crib. My mother would usually find me curled up under my crib with my baby blanket, but once she found me in the crib with my sister sleeping on top of her.

One time, a few years later, I awoke from a nightmare about an episode of Lost in Space where a green lady was mesmerizing Dr. Smith into giving her their fuel, which was her own sustenance. She had a sultry voice calling out to him seductively, “Dr. Smi-ith!” and he’d come to her, madly enthralled. I was scared to death of that lady! I awoke in the dark and popped out of bed and opened the door…I intended to cross the hall to my parents room to let them know I had a nightmare and needed some comforting. Instead, when I opened the door, there she was! She was lying on the floor between my door and my parents’ in all her shiny greenness. Then my sister woke up too and she saw the green lady too! We still don’t know how this twin nightmare happened, but young as we were we still remember it.

My sister and I were swimming at a very young age and I still remember her taking the test to swim in the Olympic-sized pool at the local recreation center. She was about 6 years old and looked younger. At first she’d get called out of the pool all the time because the life guards couldn’t believe she was allowed in the “big” pool and wanted to send her back to the “middle” pool (although, not all the way back to the “baby” pool!). I was sometimes asked to verify her “big” pool status. But, then she started diving and no one asked about her swimming ability again. I enjoyed watching her dive…she was fearless until she hit her head on the board one day and gave up diving.

When she was in middle school I remember her singing on stage and was again amazed at her self-confidence, not to mention her amazing voice. I don’t recall her doing any performing after that, but she seemed to channel all her outgoingness into friend-making. Once we were both in high school, her friends were around so much that they became my friends too. Nice to have a sister like that! (I always wanted a twin brother, for similar, but not similar reasons…but I digress). We even graduated in the same calendar year because she finished a semester early, but she still lays claim to her own graduating class a year after mine.

After that, we both felt compelled to move away from our hometown…one to the northeast, one to the west. An additional move for each of us and we are now many miles apart. That has meant not seeing one another as often as we’d like, but we are trying to make up for it now that vacation days are a bit more numerous. I wish I were there in person today to say to her:

Happy Birthday, Sis! Find the Joy in the Journey!

Related Post: Ode to My Big Sister

Ode to My Big Sister

I am blessed to have two sisters, one older and one younger. We are far-flung, but all reachable within a few hours or so, depending on mode of travel. I often think how nice it would be if we lived much closer, but on the other hand, I think it’s nice to travel and see another part of the country once in a while. My big sister lives in a big, fun city and she lives in a fabulous apartment and doesn’t mind me crashing whenever I want…well, I always give lots of notice and now that she’s an empty-nester, she has lots of room! Today is her birthday, and since I can’t be there, I thought I’d write a blog about growing up and growing older with her.

One of my earliest memories of her is about her love of the Beatles, or rather her adoration of George Harrison. I remember her watching the news coverage of a live performance where several girls close to the stage fainted and were taken away in an ambulance. My sister, just a little girl herself, was savvy enough to declare that those girls were fools…they missed the concert! My next memory of her is watching Dark Shadows together. I was too young to understand the storyline and therefore was “un-scare-able”. She’d sit on the couch with me in front of her and when something scary would happen, she’d duck her head behind me and ask me to tell her when the scary part was over!

As we got older, I learned by observation that her confrontational style about house rules got her in trouble every once in a while, or caused arguments with our parents that she lost. I therefore developed the “middle-child” style of breaking the rules first and asking for forgiveness and taking my punishment later (or rather, not getting caught in the first place).

When we hit our teens, there were three teen girls in the family all at once! Our dad was working full time and going to law school full time too…so with him out of the house a lot, our home was quite full of estrogen and drama.

Even though my sister was older than me, I always wanted the same privileges and experiences as she did…when she went off to college as I started high school, I was impatient. I wanted to skip straight to college. This was only exacerbated when we took her to college freshman year and someone mistook me for a college student! With her off at college for four years, the drama mellowed and she became this grown-up person who made decisions on her own and did things like go abroad for a year, take road trips, and make friends and date people we didn’t even know! Oh, how I wanted to be in college and all grown-up too!

My senior year in high school, just after I’d picked my college, she told me that she was going to graduate school at the same place. I was so surprised and happy! I was also completely shocked when our parents agreed to let us take a road trip that summer to visit the school and city over 600 miles away. Wow! Being an adult was SO cool! Off we went. I don’t remember doing any of the driving…my sister has always been a road-tripper able to put in 10+ hours of driving in a day. I don’t remember much of the trip, but I remember being in a popular local landmark which is very high…I was leaning over a window looking down to the street when I heard a faint “Laura? Laura? Please get away from the window!”…that was how I learned that my fearless sister is afraid of heights. You learn things on a road trip.

She has preceded me through graduate school, first job, marriage, and children. Now she is preceding me to 50 and empty-nest years. My mom always used to tell me, “don’t wish your life away”, so I guess I must have often voiced my desire to be older, like my sister. I have finally slowed down enough to appreciate where I am in my life and therefore to appreciate in a new way that I am blessed with a big sister who can help me navigate whatever comes next.

Happy Birthday, Sis! Find the Joy in the Journey!

 

Related post: Ode to My Baby Sister