Can I just tell you that whenever Jamie and I find out one of our friends or someone in our family is about to have a second baby girl...WE FREAK OUT. Mainly because we know what a gift sisters are, especially sisters who are able to pull off a bond like we've mastered after almost 25 years. We want this for ALL SISTERS everywhere. And if you don't have a sister, we want to let you in on our crazy and be the sisters you never had (see: Sarah Doese).
But that excitement we share over the news of brand-new-sisters is quickly replaced with something else...something a little darker...maybe even kind of evil...because we KNOW first-hand, in every way, what having a sister for life will mean for those sweet baby girls and for their parents.
"I can't wait for that little girl to get a sister because she's finally going to have to learn to share and with a little sister taking all her toys, maybe she won't turn out to be a spoiled brat!" -Jamie and I have both said this sentence on numerous occasions over the past ten years...I hate to admit it, but we've used it in nastier ways too, "Umm that girl needed a sister growing up to learn a little selflessness."
I'm telling you, nothing nips a spoiled brat right in the butt more than a little sister growing up right behind you wearing your favorite twirly-skirt-hand-me-downs and playing with all your Barbie's and riding the bike you JUST BARELY outgrew but still loved. From September 24th, 1992 and every day after...everything I thought was mine, was now also Jamie's.
Siblings get this, but siblings of the same gender get this even MORE. You made your peace that you might always have to share a room. You share clothes, sometimes the same interests, all the same toys, favorite movies and my favorite...the backseat. Which was my parents' primary mission field during the years we drove our navy Chevy Celebrity (can we take a moment to laugh a the irony that this car was branded as a Celebrity? In it's final days it was a D-List Celebrity at best).
After Josh and Maverick (who in my mind, are amazing gifts of a different kind), Jamie is a close third, but at times sort of 'ties' with those first two as one of the greatest treasures of my life. She's been with me longer. We literally grew up and became the people we are now, together...there's something there that can't ever be replicated, replaced, or found in anyone else but HER. She's it.
From fights in the backseat of the car during family vacations...to fits thrown about having to wear matching outfits (her: THRILLED me: HATE)...to being my best kindergarten show-and-tell EVER...we have more stories and pictures and memories together than we have with anyone else on this earth. Jamie is the only person I've ever borrowed a pair of *clean* underwear from or allowed to borrow a pair of mine (me: home from college, forgot undies! her: sleeping at your house tonight, didn't pack a bag!). If you have a sister, you're thinking, 'oh yea I totally get that.' If you don't, now you're completely grossed out, but you'll get over it.
Jamie is the only person who fully understands what it was like to wake up every day to a list of chores from mom on the kitchen table in the summer...only to promptly ignore those chores all morning to watch TV, then race around like lunatics (even helping each other!) to accomplish that list of chores in the 15 minutes before mom came home for her lunch break. With our lists complete, we turned the TV to good old Lavar Burton on 'Reading Rainbow' for good measure, and pretended like we weren't watching The Wild Thornberries on Nickelodeon all morning.
One winter break our neighbor Norma gave us Princess Diaries on VHS. We watched it every. single. day for 14 days straight and made 'rules' about if we were allowed to sing along to the background songs or if we would watch it in complete silence...NO QUOTING THIS TIME! Sometimes we throw all the rules out and put in High School Musical 2 and sing and quote and laugh the whole time and then stay up until 11:30 watching every bonus feature on the DVD (I don't know how to put this, but yes, we did this last week).
I'm told in the years before Jamie was born I prayed for a little sister so we could sleep in bunk beds. God has a pretty legit sense of humor because we shared a room and slept in twin bunk beds together until I was FOURTEEN. At the time it was obviously cruel and unusual punishment for a high school freshmen but now I BEG her to come over and sleep in my bed with me when Josh is gone pushing snow overnight...and when she spends the night on a Friday and comes into my bed for some cuddles on Saturday morning everything feels so familiar and precious and RIGHT. We are twenty-nine and twenty-five years old and we literally cannot function if it's been more than 48 hours since we've last seen each other and quite honestly, I prefer she always be sleeping under the same roof.
Getting married was kind of weird and at times threatened to change our beautiful, already established dynamic, but we barely missed a beat. Even now, when Josh and I take small trips or vacations, I feel like part of me is missing. I think about how great it would be for Jamie to see or do this with us (the inverse happens when I'm somewhere without Josh...part of me is missing then too!). She's hardly a third wheel, if anything she's sort of just part of us. Basically a permanent fixture in our home, life, and conversations. I regularly ask Josh to keep Mav for an evening so Jamie and I can have a sister-date. And Josh and I talk about Jamie as much (if not more) as we talk about Mav or the business during our dates...she's been sort of a pretend firstborn child for us.
I was adamant about not having anyone in our delivery room for any of our children EVER...but while we were hanging out in labor with Maverick, Jamie stopped by the hospital a couple times to bring us stuff we forgot and then casually hung around...kind of waiting to see how the whole thing would go down (you all now know, she would have been hanging around for a WHILE...he was born a full 24 hours later) but for a split second I was like...I need her. Yes, Josh was there and he was great, but he doesn't know me like Jamie knows me. She knows what I'm saying and what I need without me even needing to say a word which seems like something that maybe would have come in handy during labor (hindsight is 20/20). Sometimes all it takes is one word and she just takes off in the direction of whatever I'm asking.
I think I just diagnosed a few small problems Josh and I have in our marriage...shocker, our communication isn't perfect, but I'm about to blame Jamie for that because we don't even need to speak to understand each other. And sometimes that's what I expect in my marriage, but for some reason I've spent the past seven years frustrated that it doesn't. Allllllright.
She complains about me 'planning' her, but I feel like NOW is the perfect time to point out while Jamie was in high school planning to attend private college in the WRONG part of the state...I never gave up telling her that she should come to Iowa State (even up until the day I helped move her in at Northwestern...their restaurants are CLOSED on Sunday's...I don't even know how this is allowed in a college town)...be part of Salt Company...maybe even live in my basement with friends for a year or two...and then live and work in Ames so she could be close to me forever and ever and eventually be the best Auntie to my babies because yes that is something I was planning for five whole years ago...
And can I just say...I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER.
She took sort of an interesting way to accomplish this glorious plan...but eventually she checked all those things off my big-sister-knows-best-list. We've fallen into a comfortable, confident groove in our roles as big and little sister...there's no longer any competition...no hurt feelings over silly comments ("ummm that shirt doesn't look right on you, but I want to try it on because it might look better on me." - Jamie "OK FINE YOU'RE RIGHT." -Me)...we're nothing but proud to be recognized as 'Mollie's sister' or 'Jamie's sister'...and we harbor nothing but defensive, overbearing, obsessive, relentless (kind of scary) SISTER LOVE when someone has wronged the other. Even if it's just a small comment by an ex-boyfriend about how, 'aren't you over at your sister's house a lot?' BYEBOYBYEEEEEE.
So that's it. She's the best little sister in the entire world and I made 3/4 members of our family bawl like babies with this post so I'm considering it a success. I JUST LOVE YOU JAMIE LOU!
MmB
No comments:
Post a Comment