My sister and I didn't always get along. In fact, it took her moving quite a ways away from me in order for me to miss her and her insanely large CD collection. We used to fight, quite intensely and---with some time between then and now to afford us a little perspective---quite impressively, too. I still have scars (and so does she) and that's impressive! Because we were two fairly non-violent children! But put us in a room together or just leave us home alone and there would inevitably be tears and physical violence and mocking, too. My mother didn't know what to do with us for a time there. I think she really thought we'd hate one another forever, and I know it kept her up at night, racked with guilt or worry or sadness and if my sister and I regret nothing else, it's what we put my mother through all those years.
But there was a time I didn't know if we'd manage to build a friendship out of the wreckage of our relationship. I was afraid the resentment would always be too big, the differences too many, the eye-rolling too obvious to ignore. There were quite a few years I wasn't so sure we'd find our way back to each other.
Rachel moved back to California when she was eighteen and when I was just beginning my sophomore year of high school. I had never lived without her, and even though I thought I would love it, that big house all to myself, the car keys tossed into my totally incapable hands, the TV for me to watch any time of day I desired, I instantly missed her. But, unfortunately, the fighting didn't stop when she moved---although I wish I could say it did; it would make the story better, wouldn't it?---but we fought again when I visited her in California, so badly I almost had to cut the visit short. We fought one more horribly memorable time when she visited me in College Station, the first time she met Mike. And we went months without speaking after that.
I'm not proud of any of the fights---the ones that were more my fault than hers and the ones that were more hers than mine. I'm not proud of the words we screamed at one another, the tears we forced out of the other one, the scars, even. I'm not proud of all that time we wasted when we had all the time in the world to spend with one another because now it's our sad reality that we sometimes have to go years without seeing one another. In fact, it's been over a year since I've seen her, since my wedding. And I desperately want that time back, to have her down the hall, across town, even in the same country. I'd do it so differently. As would she, I think.
What I am proud of, though, is all we overcame to become friends, to become an integral part of each other's lives. We forgave each other what we wouldn't have forgiven just anyone. I am proud of who we have become and how we have fought for the relationship we have. It shows something about our character, our determination and even our stubbornness. And where I'm not proud of our actions over those twenty-some years, I am proud of us, who we are.
And I think a part of us hung on---even in the worst of times---because we knew one day we'd be adults, we'd be married, we'd have children and there would be someone very cool we'd want our families to meet---each other.
My sister gave birth to my nephew, Noah Jameson, two years ago today. I sometimes think about all my sister and I have been through, together, and what I'll tell my nephew one day about what his mother was like when she was young. How she'd hole up in her spotlessly-clean room and listen to music I was never cool enough to have heard of. How she always seemed indifferent to boys/men admiring her, and how I have always---ALWAYS---envied her hair, the hair she passed to him. How she was always so brave and, yet, she never really grasped that. How she loved spaghetti. How she was a great gymnast. How she used to take my dad's dog for a walk when she needed to smoke and, yes Noah, how she used to smoke.
Noah, despite all the fighting and silent treatments, there was always a fire in your mom I never felt in myself, a fire I always sort of longed for. She was passionate about everything---from music to the way she made her bed. She still is. She is original, one-of-a-kind, authentic, different. She always lived her life a bit on the outskirts, though. She never dived in, joined teams, struck up conversations or put herself really out there. She was always the cautious one, the guarded one, the one who you had to earn a smile or a conversation from. These aren't bad things, and in so many beautiful ways we loved her because of them, not in spite of them. But then she had you.
And now she dances and sings loudly and runs with you and lets you do things your way and is living out loud, right alongside you, in a way she never did before. In a way that is new to me because my quiet, composed sister is now shaking her ass with you on a daily basis. (Oh, Noah, your aunt says things like "ass"; you're going to totally love visiting me one day.) That stuff never came easy to her before you and then---BOOM---you came into the world all dark complexion and smiles and she couldn't help see the world differently, brighter and better. You changed my sister in an instant, in a way no other human being on the planet ever came close to.
That's fairly cool, doing all that by just being you, by just existing in the first place. It makes us adore you for bringing to your mother---my sister---a peace she has always sought for and will now have forever.
There is this tie that binds us, my sister and me, and it's been tattered and shredded and dirtied but it's never been broken. It's always stayed together, bearing the heaviest of weights. And although every time I talk to her my heart fills up and her comments on this blog have made my week at times and her e-mails get me through long, boring Friday afternoons, I think the one thing that kept me hanging on was knowing I'd get to meet you one day. Noah bug, you've given my sister two beautiful years. Thank you.
Funny, we haven't fought once since you were born. Seems like your life has been just one miracle after another.
I can't wait to see what's up ahead.
I love you. Happy birthday.
My sister.
My nephew.