The Photo

I grew up as the oldest of three girls.

The middle child, the sister closest in age to me, is the one with whom I share a very special bond. Even now that we are almost a thousand miles apart, she's my best friend and confidant. I love her children as my own, and I miss them desperately every day. Many of my fondest childhood memories are of her, and the adventures we had together.

My youngest sister and I have never been close. She is six years younger than me and for most of my chidlhood, she existed on the fringes of my life as a crying baby, a whining toddler, an annoying kindergartener.

In many ways, she was entirely superfluous to my existence. We never played with the same kids, we never attended the same school, we never had the same interests. Other than a few very notable exceptions, she is largely absent from my collective childhood memories.

That wasn't a purposeful thing. Nobody did anything to alienate us from one another. It's just the way things were because of our age difference and because we were and are polar opposites in every possible respect.

But I think it's sad all the same.

I left home when she was just 12 years old. I visited once or twice a year, but she had her friends, her interests, her own life. I wasn't particularly interested in hearing about or associating with her friends, whom I considered "trashy". She wasn't really interested in hearing about my job, my social life, my "hoity toity" existence in the big city.

As a young adult, she made what I considered to be some very bad choices. I disapproved. She felt judged. I tried to help. She resentment my meddling. I felt rejected. And our relationship eroded even further.

We became strangers.

Our history is so checkered with resentment and anger that it's difficult to relate to one another too deeply without the risk of resurrecting old hurts.

None of this means that I don't love her. On the contrary...I love her very much. And it's because I love her that I worry, I meddle, I judge. It's what big sisters do, even big sisters who are estranged from their little sisters by time and circumstance.

She is smart, my little sister, but she doesn't give herself enough credit. I hate that. She has such incredible potential. She could be so much. She could have so much. And of course, I want it all for her...even if she doesn't want it for herself.

All of this has made our relationship very superficial, brittle, tentative and timid. I try not to say too much, and end up perhaps saying too little. She tries to relate to things she can't possibly understand and ends up sounding insincere.

So, we smile and we make polite chit chat. Very rarely is anything of any consequence said. We dance around the deeper issues that lie at the core of our relationship. And I don't know how to make us closer. We have so much to overcome. We have both, at times, felt that the other just didn't care.

This past Christmas, we exchanged gifts as we always do. It's hard for me to buy for her...as I said, we are strangers and I tend to give her the kind of impersonal all-purpose things that one gives to the myriad of people who cross one's path but whom one scarcely knows. Her gifts to me are often similarly generic.

I unwrapped her gift absently, without relish, without anticipation. I chatted with my family as my hands tore at the paper. But then a glimmer of gold and glass caught my eye, and a swatch of polka-dotted cotton peeped through the paper. Curious now, I tore the rest of the paper impatiently away and found a piece of my childhood staring back at me.

Three little girls, lined up like pickets in a fence, wearing matching red polka-dot jumpers. A brunette, a blonde, and a baby with fine red fuzz sticking up all over her head.

Suddenly I was 30 years in the past. It was picture day.

I remembered complaining over the way my bangs hung in my eyes, and I remembered how the elastic in the puffed sleeves made my arms itch. I remembered that the sandals I wore were a discordant yellow. My Mother said it didn't matter because they wouldn't be seen. But it bugged me all the same.

I remembered the bright glare of fluorescent lighting in the store, the slap of my feet on the cheap tile floor. I remembered racks of lollipops strung together in plastic, hanging in strips to the floor. I remembered the merry crinkle as my sister spun the rack and how it teetered back and forth with its own momentum.

I remembered the baby fussing. She had teeth trying to break through her tender gums. I remember the cool plumpness of her bare arms and legs as I tried to soothe her. I remember my mother fretting over the drool on her jumper.

I have seen that photo a hundred times over the course of my life. With the years, it has faded and yellowed, until we all looked happily jaundiced, and the cheery tomato red of our jumpers turned a curious chromatome orange.

But here it was, in a pretty gold frame; the richness of our skin, the lustre of our hair and the brilliant reds and golds of the autumn background all restored to their proper hues.

And it struck me with the intensity of a physical blow...that this photo means something to her.

This photo of us.

Sisters. And Sisterhood.

And I knew then that we would be okay. Maybe not perfect. Maybe not good enough. But we can and we will, keep on trying. Becase it matters. To both of us.


Thanks Little Sister.