We threw a surprise party for my sister this weekend. It was the second time we were able to do this, the last time being eighteen years ago. My goal, on her thirtieth birthday, was to make sure she realized she was not number two. She has gone through life doing everything after me—and with a big mouth, a matching personality, and a demanding (judgmental?) demeanor, I imagine my shadow was pretty intense.
Lucky for her, she was pretty triumphant at standing out in the dark.
But this was 1/11/11 and she was turning thirty—and Goddamnit, I was going to celebrate my sister’s birthday. Every year she thanks me for being born, since the story is that I asked for her. I remember saying I wanted a baby sister. My mother says I used to look into other baby carriages longingly and give her speeches to the tune of, “Well when Grandma and Grandpa die you’ll have your brother, but I will have no one. I will be left all alone.”
Of course I don’t know if I remember it because I actually said it or because it was retold so many times it has become a vague part of my collective history. Nonetheless, when I was six and a half years old, baby Reena came into my life. For me. I took this responsibility seriously. She was my sister and—according to my parents and as thirty years would teach me—she was the closest person to me in the world.
I struggled at different stages of our relationship about whether I was the big sister/mother character versus the best friend character. I often walked a fine line, walked on eggshells and cried at night that I was doing the wrong thing or not enough or too much.
For thirty years, we’ve been quintessential sisters, living and breathing the sister bond you read about in greeting cards. As life brought us together or pulled as further apart, we still spoke almost every day; we shared everything. My biggest heartbreak was that my baby sister didn’t always have peace and happiness in her life. It seemed to me she was struggling when she didn’t need to be, angry when she could so easily forgive, and lonely when she had people all around her.
