It’s my sister’s 40th birthday today, and besides my kids and my husband, she is my favorite person in the universe. I know that is so cliche, because little sisters often pretty much worship the ground their sisters walk on, but in this case, I have so much evidence that I actually do have the best sister ever. After all, she has gotten into fights for me, indeed, has even offered to lay down her life for me.
Let me tell you about her. When we were really little, we really liked each other. My earliest memory of my sister is when I was about 2 years old and our family drilled a well in the horse pasture, and my sister and I were allowed to play in the clay to our heart’s content. I clearly remember looking at my sister and thinking that she could do anything, and that I had no mud-playing skills compared to her. It was frustrating, but I wanted to watch her all day long so I could learn from her. I was hooked on her from that day forward. She was the smartest, prettiest, most obedient person I knew. She always knew how to do jobs quickly and correctly, how to keep her room clean, how to keep her things nice (her dolls always had shiny, silky hair), and she had the most amazing, long hair, while mine did not seem to grow past my shoulders. When she went to a friend’s house, the mother would comment on how nice it was to have her visit. When I went to a friend’s house, the mother would remark about me, “Well, she is NOT an angel!” In school she got straight A’s right from the start. It appeared that she didn’t even have to try. In school, I could barely achieve a C, try as I might. Everything just came out backwards and upside down for me. So at some point I realized that adults compared us a lot, and I came out on the bottom. We were so different from one another.
At some point, I began to feel jealousy toward my sister because of these (real or simply perceived) comparisons. That was when my mother instituted window washing, with one sister on either side of the window, hands had to wash at the same place at the same time, and the window had to be perfect before we could leave the task. If we fought while washing windows, or if we didn’t keep our hands in sync on either side of the window, we’d hear her sing out, “So many windows to wash! I am so lucky that I’ll have a second washed when that one is done!” We must have fought a lot because I remember washing windows every single day, staring at my sister’s face, learning to work together so we could stop washing. After a while, it worked, and we fought far less. But other things were going on at that time, as well. There were babies in the house. A LOT of them. 2 were foster babies, and one, in particular, was one we were to adopt. We all loved that baby very much, but it became obvious that his birth father was cleaning up his act (thank goodness!), and as he was a good father, the baby was re-unified. This was probably the first hardship my sister and I went through together. We lost our brother. When we were older, the three boys came along, and my sister and I suddenly found ourselves somewhat on our own. Not that our parents stopped parenting us, but we were expected to behave ourselves, get ourselves through school with good grades, and each help out with a baby on a daily basis. I remember one night, after my first brother was born, feeling very overwhelmed because I was so bad at school, and now I felt that my mom had even less time to help me. My sister had gone to private school for a year when she was in 7th grade, and she came to me when I was in 6th grade and very gently told me that it might be time to tell mom and dad I needed to leave homeschool to experience a different teacher who had more time to teach me so my mom could spend more time taking care of my brother. I was so relieved by this. I believed so strongly that my sister knew what was best in every single situation, and so I went to my parents and proposed that I stop home schooling and go to private school. I am certain the decision was much more my parents than mine, but at the time it seemed that my sister had such a great idea, and that my parents listened to her. Her idea was such a lifesaver for me. Not only did I thrive in traditional school, for the first time ever, I became confident that I was actually smart. I went from a C/D student to a straight A student. Things suddenly clicked for me. My sister helped me with pre-algebra and she had so many math tricks up her sleeve that I’d never understood before. I was so ecstatic that I was finally succeeding like she was. When my last brother was born, I was just about to enter high school, and because he had so many problems, my sister and I had to band together even more. She was so kind to me and mothered me through some really tough and lonely times. I am not sure she knew she was doing this, but she was. I knew I could count on her to listen to me, to let me sleep in her room when I was sad, to help me clean my room when I was overwhelmed, and even to help me with my chores, which I was not very good at. I clearly remember that with the birth of my last brother and our beginning high school, we became friends for the first time. I don’t mean convenient playmates, like we were as kids, but real friends. She helped me most by her uncanny ability to read people and know who was a good person to be with, and who was trouble. If people say I have a frightening ability to know a person’s character within a minute of meeting them, my sister has that kind of intuition within 10 seconds. She’s the smartest person I know. When I was 9 years old, she told me I would marry Brandon, and she was right. She told me the friends in my freshman drama class were trouble and I should steer clear, and she was right. She cautioned me to be wary of those I had chosen as my closest friends, and she had very good reasons for her caution, and she was right. She taught me how to not get screwed over by people, that nobody but your family has your back, and she was right. We had so many very good conversations on those long car rides to and from school, and so really amazing fights, as well.
When I was 16 years old, I discovered that my sister loves me more than she loves herself, and that changed everything forever. We had been through a lot together before that, and were pretty good friends, and she had gone to live overseas for 6 months. I missed her every single day when she was gone. For the first time in my life, I had to face the world alone. I had very good training from my parents up to that time, so all was well, but I missed my sister as my friend and favorite confidant. My parents were good enough to let me go to Morocco to meet up with my sister at the end of my sophomore year in high school, and I jumped at the opportunity. My sister planned the trip, we were to travel Northern Africa and Western Europe over 2 1/2 months that summer, and we were going to do it on the extreme cheap. Our journey began with a 3rd class train ride in a 3rd world country where men were used to treating European women like prostitutes, and because we looked to them like Europeans, we found ourselves in a very tricky situation in the room between train cars. What I remember most were men coming at us, trying to do us harm, and when we fought back, trying to kill us by pushing us off the train, and my sister went into lioness mode. She stood in front of me, then sat on me, kicked at those men with all her might, and screamed for me to get out of there and leave her to fend them off. I told her they would kill her, and she said, “I don’t care, I just want you to be safe!” I couldn’t believe it. She was at that moment facing death for me, and facing it without flinching. To go through life with certainty that at least one person will lay down her life for you is a treasure most will never possess. I am one of the lucky ones, and my sister gave me that gift.
Not that I want my sister to die to have that certainty, and luckily it didn’t come to that. All ended well enough, although we had to pay them about 1/4 of our already-limited funds to get them to leave us alone. The rest of our trip through Europe was rather uneventful by comparison, and while we ate very little while there due to the dire state of our finances after the train incident, I did notice that my sister gave me more than she ate herself, probably because we both wasted away a little and were constantly hungry for those 2 1/2 months, and she didn’t want me to suffer.
We have been through many more tragedies together. We watched a wall of fire consume our property, our home, and we watched our father, his beard on fire, as he frantically tried to fight that fire with a garden hose. As we drove through the flames to safety with nothing but the clothes on our backs, I remember my sister squeezing my hand as tightly as she could, and she whispered, “We’ll be okay,” and I knew we would be. We have had far more happy times, together, though. My sister and I continue to be so different from one another, although we are more similar than I realized when we were kids. We both have more education than most people we know, and succeed in anything we do with highest honors and are better at it than our peers. Thanks to my sister who believed in me way back when she suggested I try traditional school, because she thought I was smart when nobody else thought I was, I have the courage to pursue life like that. Thanks to my sister, I understand how to guide my children to become amazing, courageous, virtuous individuals. Thanks to my sister, I know how to face the wind of tragedy head on, without wavering, and come out on the other side a far better person. Thanks to my sister, the happiness I have in life is far happier because I know that even if every other person in the world were to abandon me, she would still stand by my side, he head high in the air, here eyes fierce and wise and determined, and she’d whisper to me, “We’ll be okay.” And we would be.
Happy Birthday, to the best sister in the entire world! I love you so much! Here’s to another 40 years of insane adventures together!
🙂
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