To Remind Myself

I was looking at an old post, one from about the time I got pregnant, and decided to repost it.  It is as much a reminder to myself as an explanation to others.

Why I Want Another Kid or Ode to My Sister

I know some sisters who only see each other on Mother's Day and some who will never speak again. But most are like my sister and me... linked by volatile love, best friends who make other best friends ever so slightly less best. ~Patricia Volk

I can pinpoint the exact time that my sister and I actually crossed over into the territory of friends. It was the summer that I was 11; she was 13. She went to Japan for 2 weeks on a trip she won at school. A week after she left I went to a 2 week summer camp. We had never been away from one another for 3 weeks. It was strange. It was odd for me to be an only child for that week before camp. Or to be left out of the loop for that week that she was home while I was not. My parents traveled a great deal and my sister and I were often left with my grandmother. Which meant we were often each others only safe harbor. But that didn't mean that we were friends, exactly. Until that summer.

Somehow, after that, we managed to be both sisters (which meant sibling rivalry-2 teens, sharing a bathroom, what else could we be?) and friends. We were one anothers confidante, confessor, therapist, tormentor...

We have gone through cycles, stages where we didn't talk as often. She moved away to go to college, came back to Georgia just as I moved away to go to college. We were still close, still talked about everything when we did talk, but it was sometimes sporadic. Then I got married and we were suddenly talking nearly every day, several times a day. About 4 or 5 years ago there were some major changes in my life and we became closer. And then some changes in her life and we became closer still. We spent a great deal of time together and got to know one another more as adults, as the women we have become.

A few years ago she moved up here and we were in the same city for the first time in 9 years. It's amazing! We can go to dinner together, watch movies, share clothes, meet one anothers friends. Spend Christmas morning together again. She gets to watch my daughter grow up. I get to watch her sing. We are a participant in one anothers daily lives.

Yesterday I got some wild hair and decided to go through some old boxes in the attic. I'm a bit of a pack rat so there were a lot of old notes and letters and bits of rubbish I had decided were important at one time or another. I was sifting through it and came across a letter my sister wrote me before she moved away to college. It is so indicative of our personalities and our relationship.

To My Dear Sister,
I don't know if I can even write this letter because I really don't want to leave you. Who the hell am I going to fight with over clothes? the phone? the cleaning? Who's going to cook for me? Geez, I'm going to be lost.
Whitney, you are my other half...but for now I'm leaving. And you're going to have to talk to all of the strangers by yourself. It's okay...I know you can do it.
As I think back on how much you've changed but haven't changed my heart grows happy. You have brought a few characteristics up with you from childhood I would have preferred you left. But they are what makes you...you.
Let my just say I'm very proud to call you my sister and best friend. You are a beautiful, intelligent, and talented woman and I wouldn't change you for the world. I Love You.
Your big sis,
Ashley

I have gotten better about talking to strangers. And she can cook for herself (although I still do that for her sometimes). And we don't fight about the cleaning and the telephone. Yet she still calls me her best friend, as I do her.

I want my daughter to have this opportunity. The opportunity to have someone who knows her inside out, from the beginning, and loves her forever. Someone to play with, share secrets with, fight with, complain about her dad and me with...Yes, I want another child for myself as well. But not just for me.

Sibling relationships - and 80 percent of Americans have at least one - outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust.  ~Erica E. Goode, "The Secret World of Siblings," U.S. News & World Report, 10 January 1994

I love my daughter so much that I want her to have that.