Originally published in October 2015
There’s something about sisters
Last week, state newspapers ran a story about a 16-year-old girl who stabbed
her 14-year-old sister. The sister’s injuries were non-life-threatening, and
the attacker was arrested.What’s scary and yet funny in a macabre way is that story nearly could have been written about my sister and me. We are also two years apart, and, to use a cliché, we fought like cats and dogs while growing up. At one point, in our early teens, we faced off in the kitchen, both armed with knives from the butcher block. After a few tense moments, we came to our senses, put down the knives and backed away from each other. I’m sure we realized that if we hadn’t killed each other, Mom and Dad would have finished the job for us.
As I often said to my mother, “She’s my sister and I love her, but that doesn’t mean I always have to like her.”
Few in my family believe me, as I would have been only 27-months-old at the time, but I have a dim memory of the day my sister came into my life. I remember being at the hospital and looking through a glass window, but what I mostly remember is eating ice cream, the kind that came in a little plastic cup with a wooden stick as a spoon. We must have shared a room when we were very small, but I thankfully have no memory of it.
Other childhood memories of my sister are more vivid. Pam Brown said, “Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five.” My sister took a tub of red clay and used it to “decorate” my Holly Hobby toy box. The clay came off, but the red stains never did. She also claimed one of my baby dolls as her own, and convinced mom of the same. Granted, I hadn’t played with that doll in a while, but once she laid claim to it, I wanted it back something fierce. She cut off her own pigtail once and knowing she would get into big trouble for it, tried to claim that I did it to her. She still actually makes that claim, but I know better. Mom does too.
My sister brought the annoyance of “I’m not touching you,” with a pointed finger held about a millimeter away from me to an art form. Mom and Dad often had to threaten to pull over when we’d get going in the backseat of the car.
She liked to needle and annoy me, and I would often barricade myself in my room, desperately wishing for a door that locked. I’d use a magazine rack and whatever else was nearby to block the door. She’d then get a yardstick and slide it underneath.
A friend of the family liked to share the story of how he came across my sister and me running around in the woods near the hunting camp he shared with my Dad. As the story goes, she was following me around, and I stopped and said “why are you always (expletive deleted) me off?”
As I must have been about 6 or 7 at the time, my use of that word was shocking, and to the family friend, hysterically funny.
My sister has always been very tough. If you hit her once, she’d hit back three times. She also had a very twisted sense of what was hers. My clothes were fair game, but to touch any of her wardrobe was to risk bloodshed.
I finally devised a system, so I’d be able to figure out what was missing from my closet. I labeled my hangers. My family still makes fun of me for that, but it was the best I could come up with to keep track of what was mine.
Margaret Mead said that the relationships between sisters is probably the most competitive in a family, but “once sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.”
After my family moved from Colorado back to Michigan, my sister and I began to get along better. We both went to the same college for a term, and even had a class together. Since she often had to miss class because of volleyball games, we worked out a deal. She’d take notes on days she could attend, and I would doze off. I would stay awake and take notes when she was gone.
People often tell us how much we look alike, something that has made us crazy over the years. We share some weird quirks, the most notable being that if a light switch plate has more than one switch, they all have to be either up or down.
Now that we are adults, we are friends. She still likes to try to needle me, calling my cat Bandit instead of Zoopie. In return, when I visit her place, I re-arrange her carefully placed knick knacks and other decorations.
My sister now lives over five hours away, in Indianapolis. I miss her.
It’s been over a year since my first and only visit to her new home. When she lived in Madison and Fall River, we got together often for shopping expeditions, dinner or a movie. Now we keep in touch with phone calls, the occasional email, and her commenting anonymously to posts I make in my blog.
Linda Sunshine said "If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child."
Though I often expressed the desire to be an only child while growing up, I’m so very glad that I’m not.
