Sisters Are Different

I make really good friends, great friends, friends that feel like family. I am blessed with the sort of friends I can fall back on the rest of my life.

Yet, my sister is different. She's the one who greeted me, shoving the welcoming arms of our mother out of her way in order to see "her sister!" She's the one who hit me pretty often and tickled me and threw me for fun and would swing me until I was sick. She's the one who always had the worst (and most fun) ideas. She knows what I look like throwing up and crying and laughing until I pee. She carried me home more than once and helped me igure out ways to not tell mom. She knows what kind of baby I was, and what kind of difficult kid I was. She knows that the road to where I am now as a person was a long one because she was there making her way on her own road.

My sister can sing John Denver songs that we both know all the words to. We can be little duet singing Christmas carols and songs by Ronnie Milsap, Three Dog Night, Anne Murray, Jim Croce, Sting, Pink Floyd, The BeeGees, etc. My sister knows about the big headphones and the eight track player.

My sister knows why I am weird about personal space and that I do not like to play games that involve tight spaces. She knows when I first got alcohol without my parents knowing. She knew well before my mother when my first cycle started.

My sister is not so into local food or raw milk or free range chickens, but she thinks it's all pretty cool. She doesn't want to see our milking routine or gather eggs, but she's glad we're having fun.  She argues with my husband, but she loves him. She adores my children even when they talk her ear off her wake her by fighting. She is not offended when they try to improve her or are ready to throw her in the plague wagon.

We're not alike, at all, and yet, I can barely imagine what my life would be without her just hanging around.