Irish Twins,,,Happy Birthday to my Seeester

    Two months after my Mom gave birth to my older sister Elle, she found out she was pregnant with me. We're what you call, "Irish Twins". But the truth is, that term often comes with the connotation of  a similarity of twinship which is, frankly, hard to live up to. Which, in truth, is sort of how I felt growing up in the shadow of my sister.

     As young girls, we had a fierce competition and rivalry that was common in siblings so close in age. When Elle learned to read, it was possibly the worst 2 years of my life until I caught up to her. I remember feeling as if she were sailing away on a sailboat to exotic destinations while I was stuck with my feet in the water at the end of the dock. When she and her girlfriends talked about hair and make up and fashion, I felt like the contumacious chub who would never fit in. Where Elle was fit and tan and long-limbed, I felt like the shortened stub of a pencil with chew marks all around. We fought, physically and emotionally, over everything and anything. Mealtimes were a race to see who could finish first. And, as our parents quickly learned, if we didn't have the exact same amount and type of whatever food the other had, things just escalated to epic proportions of calamity which, looking back, as I now see the same things in my own sons, I think I owe my parents a huge debt of gratitude for not selling us off to a band of gypsies for having dealt with such ridiculousness.

Speaking of Gypsies, that was one of our favorite games. That and Prairie Women. There weren't any rules, we would just be outside, and make concoctions out of pine needles, dirt, and water, and pretend we were nursing our chloranemic neighbors or children. Those are some of the fondest memories of my life. Those, and the times where we roomed together and would whisper across the space between beds until late in the night, of fairies and dragons, heroines and disasters, orphans who needed our rescue, all the animals we would grow up and save.

Our Mom was a complicated lady, and there were times where Elle and I would band together in defense against her chaos. Those times were instrumental in weaving our personalities and alliances together in ways invisible to the naked eye, but as surely as any covert training for double agency, they were bonds that would last a lifetime. I don't have to even live on the same continent to know when Elle is hurting or needs me. And she has that same psychic response to my tragedies as well. Sisters. Man, what an emotionally loaded word that is!

Elle as a younger girl was greedily smart. What I mean by that is she never shied away from being the smartest in her class because of any societal pressure for girls to be less than or quieter than their male peers. That was another gift I believe our Mom instilled in us. But where I was more socially preoccupied or sensitive, she tolerated being geeky because she knew she was smarter than average. It wasn't until 8th grade when she finally broke and decided she wanted more...she wanted to be the smartest AND the most desired. And over the course of a year, her and my relationship morphed into something else entirely, as the undercurrents of what was going on in our home with Mom was rocked with more tectonic shifts in what we thought were the limits of security and safety. Things were getting bad with my Moms drinking and mental health, and the introduction of husband number three was a harbinger of a period of time which I almost don't remember, so strong was my desire to be elsewhere.

So, in 9th grade, my sister was suddenly someone new to me. She was Marilyn where Norma Jean had just been. When I say she blossomed, it's such an understatement. She didn't just blossom, she exploded like a shower of fireworks. And as I watched from my envious and clumsy 7th grade eyes, a rift started growing where jealousy, hormones, hurt feelings, and all things tween/teen age girls are concerned only served to solidify. She was suddenly, awkwardly and lustily, admired by the boys in our school, who for the past 10 years had barely noticed her but as an academic competitor. And I can't blame her, she relished in her new position. And in a way I was super proud, but I was also super jealous and left out. That was the first year I realized she and I were very different. Where I viewed academics and popularity as a given before, not really working hard at either, I swiftly recognized both would take hard work, and I was sinking in my own beginnings of depression at home and I felt she was moving further away from me, her kid sister.

Our teen years were the years I remember mostly feeling filled with doubt and sadness. I wasn't in a good place mentally, and neither was she, frankly. But she hid it well, and remained an "it" girl throughout high school. She probably doesn't remember it that way, but from the vantage point of little sister, it was plain as day. Of course we were still "friends", but there was more a feeling of her having to let me "tag along" than there had ever been before. I think she realized I was faltering (well, it was pretty obvious, what with hospitalizations and all) but I keenly felt like I was a duty that she felt forced to administer to. Those years were like a bombardment of emotions, jealousy, secrets, lies, turncoat deceptions, false alliances and such. Which, probably any teenage girls can attest was the way it was if they had a sister so close in age.

But through it all, when I really needed her, she put aside the tenuous role of beauty queen and came back to me. The letters and things she did for me while I was away on whatever hospital stay will remain in my heart as the strongest shows of love anyone has ever given me. One time she and her boyfriend and a couple other high-school friends painted my room purple so when I came home it would really feel like "mine" and be a fresh start. She started all her letters "Amanda-Belle" because Belle meant beautiful. She wanted me to get better, and even after being released, and on my own, for many years she propped me up despite my many attempts at self-sabotage.

She took on the role of mothering me when I needed it most. Again, our relationship had shifted seismically, and taken on a new level of need and trust. I can't count all the times I ran to her in the middle of whatever catastrophe I was immersed in and she simply gave me a bed and some warm tea. By this time, she was solidly her own person, and had, with typical Elle determination and drive, begun to order her life and future into a controllable and structured goal with actions that had desirable outcomes. She was again the brainy student. She started off at Community college, working her way with scholarship and fellowships from Community College to State College to one of the finest colleges in our area, Trinity. Again, she had become someone new. She went back and embraced her old nerdy self, knowing what she wanted and needed and simply doing whatever it took to get there.  She was my stalwart champion, my rock, and even though I fought tooth and nail against what was good for me, knowing that she would always be there for me was one of the few things that I remember with joy during those dark years. It wasn't what she said or did that saved me from myself. It was simply knowing that she was there, she was safe, she was the same sister I'd gotten scrapes and bruises riding bikes with, and she was there, waiting, for whenever I needed her.

And now here we are, a lifetime later. Both mothers. Both making our own homes for our own children and probably thinking way too much about how to avoid becoming our mother. My sister has the singular capacity to shelter me even from across the Atlantic ocean. When I try to describe my sister to someone, it's so hard, because she is chameleon-like in her gift of being so many different women in one. She's safety. She's strength. She's goofy, geeky, and corny. She's so deliciously intelligent and witty it makes my heart ache that we can't just spend every night sipping wine and talking at each others kitchen table. That movie, "In her Shoes", where the Cameron Diaz character reads aloud ee cumming's "I carry your Heart" poem at her sisters wedding? Yeah, I bawl every time because that's just so much how I feel about Elle. If you don't know it, here's the poem:

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Oh God, now I'm ugly crying. Okay, so, anyway, today is my sisters Birthday. For the past 16 days we were the same age. Today she moves on again, older than me once again. But as sisters are, we are always the same age, because we have lived every experience and lifetime together. She knows everything about me, and I,  about her. I can tell you right now how she would feel if I were hugging her, what she smells like, what shade of warm brown her eyes are, how big and toothy her beautiful smile is. Elle, I carry your heart with me, always, I carry it in my heart.