Sister Sister

The Saturday before Christmas I had lunch with my sister at a little crepe place near my house. We had a lovely time and it made me feel nostalgic for our childhood days when we would spend so much time together. There were relatively few times I resented being the big sister probably because mostly I enjoyed being a part of my sister’s development and growth. As we chatted over lunch it really hit me how much I missed my sister. I wanted to just capture her and our time and save it in a jar so I could take it out and relive it over and over again. I know both of our lives are busy in different ways and that, combined with the physical distance between our homes, makes it a challenge to stay up-to-date on the daily happenings in our lives. The other thought that occurred to me, after I felt the pang of missing my sister, I was shocked and yet shouldn’t have been that my sister is one of my biggest supporters. She doesn’t have children and doesn’t have plans to become a parent, yet she gets it in ways my own parents do not. She accepts my children with ease and no judgment on how different they are from other children (my mother is always expressing how lost she is because my children are not like the children she reared – she is not trauma informed). Maybe it’s because she really doesn’t have any children to compare to, at least not in a parental sense. In other ways my sister insists on seeing my children as capable in ways they might not be, but her positivity in their abilities is somewhat refreshing, given the negative thoughts of others. So, since we had such a nice time together and since it’s been so long since we’ve spent any prolonged time together, we agreed I should come visit her over President’s Day weekend. We have plans to visit local wineries for wine tastings and whatever else we feel like doing together and I think it’s going to be grand. I’m really looking forward to the visit!