I was twelve when my sister was born. There is no era of her life that I don't remember. While there were large chunks of her growth that I learned of through emails and phone calls while I was in college and Peace Corps and Kansas City and law school, there is no year of her life that is not vividly etched in the experience of my own.
She's a junior in high school now. I am sure she has hazy but distinct memories of me at that age, she would have been four. She remembers me singing her to sleep maybe, or watching me line up for photos with friends in various poufy, poufy prom dresses. She doesn't remember the fights I had with Dad, or the exhaustion of too many honors classes and too many plays. She doesn't remember me as the often sullen, sulky, teenagery girl I'm sure my parents occassionally recall.
When she was younger, and I was younger, I often marveled at how alike we were. Both sunny and smart, dramatic, (overly) sensitive, curious. But as I got older parts of me became less of those things and more of others. And while I still feel like we are more alike than we are different, our differences are acute and powerful, which is exactly how it should be. She was never supposed to be a newer version of me, a cleaned up copy without my flaws. She was only supposed to be her.
I'm in Madison, WI this week for work. I've never been to this town before and I like it. And I like being here alone, with nobody but myself to entertain. I like walking down State Street and eating Afghani food (too salty) and browsing a dusty used bookstore for an hour. And as I walked around campus and into shops my sister would love, I remembered how caged I felt at 16. How desperate I would have been for a small window of time where I just got to wander, with nobody to report to, no papers to write, no boyfriends to break up with and cry over. Just wander, eat weird things, smile at strangers, buy books I don't need, and apologize to noone for my selfishness.
I look at my sister sometimes and I remember that caged feeling, when you know your parents mean well and love well, but you have a world to see. And I want to just hold her and tell her to survive another couple of years, to thrive in them and enjoy the occassional lack of responsibility. Because two years from now she will be tucked away in some college with more freedom than she can imagine, enough freedom to be terrifying and exhilirating all at once.
I do not feel old. While I am quickly approaching 29, I have never had that odd fear many women (including my friends) have regarding the 30th birthday. I have always felt that life must get exponentially better as time progresses, because the older one is, the more adventures one has had. You can't subtract the fun from years. So adding time just seems like adding opportunities for happiness you didn't know you had coming. But, young as I feel, and young as I am, I can look at my sister and be both envious of the years she has before her and worried, as I know I would not really wish to repeat them.
I wish many Afghani/Laotian/Tahitian/Moroccan/Catalan restaurants tucked in side streets for my sister. And tiny bookshops with winding iron stairs. And views from the tops of mountains and the sides of hills in cities and states and countries she hasn't thought about visiting yet. And teachers that inspire her. And classes that she thought she'd love that she discovers she hates. And vice versa. Friends that will go on road trips with her to illogical places. Lucky breaks. A pretty church. Music in parks with blankets tossed on cool, green grass. A million reasons to take a picture.
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