Day 5

30 Days: Day 5-Your siblings

I am the oldest of three girls. My little sisters are twins and were born when I was 3 1/2 years old. They are 33 years old and not little anymore, but I'm the oldest so I get to call them that. S is older than K by one minute and they are and always have been polar opposites.

When we were growing up, they always wanted to be with me. I'm not being conceited, it's a fact. When I was outside playing, they wanted to be doing whatever I was doing. When I had friends over, they drove me crazy wanting to be in my room too. Sometimes, I'd let them "spend the night" in my room, and they loved it. They'd fight over whose turn it was. We'd listen to music and dance and sing together, even putting on little shows for my parents and their friends. We'd put on a record and perform. K would announce us and sometimes do a little goofy dance, I always sang the lead vocals and S would do the backing vocals, or whatever I told her to sing. When I was taking German in high school, I taught S a bunch of it. As we grew into our teen years and all of us wanted to use the phone, we each had a 30-minute time limit. For the day. Their junior high was a little closer than my high school, so someone would already be on the phone when I got home. (My parents were both working in the afternoons by then) So I'd get home and demand that whoever was on the phone got off. And of course they wouldn't. Naturally, this progressed to screaming and yelling and pulling the phone away or even pulling the cord out of the wall. There would be physical fighting even. Phone calls are a serious matter when one is a teen you know...

So, when Shell and I ran away it damaged the bond that my sisters and I were starting to discover. By the time we got back, they were starting high school and wanted nothing to do with Shell and I. S hung out with kids who ditched school, smoked pot and had no ambition. K was in color guard, was friends with a lot of the kids in band and got really good grades. When K got pregnant just before turning 16, everyone thought that it would ruin her. I think it only made her more determined to succeed. Her boyfriend was 2 years older and they decided together to keep the baby and get married. Both sets of parents supported them and at 5 months pregnant, they were married and moved in with his parents so he could finish school and graduate. When my parents moved to Colorado, they decided to join them. By the time my niece was born, K and I were growing closer and that has continued ever since. My niece will be 17 in August and my sister and brother-in-law will celebrate their 17th anniversary next week. They also have another daughter who will be 13 this month. They moved back to California years ago so that my brother-in-law could go to the police academy while they lived with his parents. He is now a detective. My sister graduated high school on time and although it took her a long time, she graduated nursing school and is an RN in an emergency department of a busy hospital. They have a gorgeous house and very nice cars and I am ridiculously proud of them. My sister and I are very close and talk as often as our schedules allow. We don't have a lot of the same interests; she is a fashionista and a shoe snob and I am very much not. But we enjoy being together and genuinely like each other. Which is more than she can say about her twin.

When everyone moved to Colorado, my sister S did not want to leave her friends and her school so Shell & I agreed to let her live with us. The same month that my niece was born, 16-year-old S got pregnant. Her boyfriend was a loser, but she "loved him" and wouldn't admit it. To take advantage of my dad's insurance over state insurance, she moved to Colorado until my nephew was born, but a few months later she moved back to CA to live with her boyfriend. This was just before Shell & I moved to CO and since they had very little money I didn't get to see them unless someone paid for them to fly out for a visit. When she finally broke up with my nephew's dad, they moved to CO. Shell got S a job where she worked and I babysat my nephew. I saw her a lot and that continued once my kids were born. When they were newborns, she would come over on her lunch and help me with them or do dishes or laundry for me. We relied on each other for a lot of things over the years and became friends. Unfortunately, life has not been as kind to her as her twin, although her choices really are to blame. She lives in Missouri now and was a single mom for so many years, but always wanted to try for a daughter. When she got pregnant 4 years ago by a guy she'd only been seeing for a few months, we thought it would end with her now being single raising two kids. She is still with my niece's dad, but they've decided to walk away from their money pit of a house to rent one. They struggle financially and I wish they lived closer so we could help with babysitting or have them over for dinner or something easier to do than loan them money, which we just can't.

So, like I said. Polar opposites those two. S resents the way that K's life has turned out compared to hers. S doesn't know why she hasn't gotten a break in life, whereas K went out and made her break happen. That's the difference. Ambition, motivation and drive. One has none while the other has oodles of it. A simple difference sometimes makes all the difference.


Me and S last summer.


Me & my baby sister K in January.