Bubbaloo

When I was little, I wanted a baby brother or sister even more than I wanted a puppy.

I was nine years old by the time my sister finally barreled into our lives, all squishy cheeks and pink rage, and it seemed I was too old to have any friends share in my anticipation. Most of my peers already had siblings, younger or older, and my proud pronouncements of “My mom is going to have a baby!” were mostly met with shrugs and lazy “cools.”

She made her debut in the very early morning hours of Valentine’s Day. From the couch in the corner of the hospital room, I watched her enter this world and cried tears of joy so hard that when I went with my dad to alert the rest of the family in the waiting room, my grandmother thought something had gone terribly wrong.

A Valentine’s baby was sure to be sweet, but she was a Sour Patch Kid. A Warhead. A SweeTart punch to the ear drum who flopped herself around in her crib if things didn’t go exactly her way. She was the cutest baby anyone had ever seen but she had fire behind her twinkly eyes. She looked like a mischievous pixie, an impossibly cute Pixar cartoon character come to life. She was so mercurial, my parents joked they would have never had me if she’d come first. She wore us out.

I wanted a baby sister all the way up until she arrived, I guess. But then she did and she was her own person and not just a pliable doll for me to play with. The years between us were so unfortunately timed that she was a newly verbal toddler while I entered my fragile preteen years. She’d loudly ask about the pimples on my face until I cried, certain she was bullying me on purpose, complaining to my parents who sighed and told me to be the bigger (literally) person.

There were moments of sweet togetherness, like our tradition of watching Disney channel movies and having breakfast for dinner when I babysat, but our relationship was mostly stormy while I lived at home. In December 1999, when she was just shy of four years old, I wrote in the gratitude section of my journal, “She was a total brat today, so I need to write her in here to remind myself how much she means to me.”

When I left for college, she was eight years old and she sobbed hysterically outside my dorm. During the four years I was away, I’d periodically send her books, hoping she’d share my love of young adult novels. She’d send me sweet cards, telling me I was her favorite sister and begging me not to forget about her, but we’d grow further apart before we started getting closer. I felt overprotective of her and also strangely motivated to hold her to high standards. I always knew she was capable of more than she let on, knew that she was smarter than she insisted, and in pushing her to push herself, I pushed her away.

When she got her drivers license, she began to pick me up at the airport when I’d come home, and we’d spend my first hours back in Colorado alone together, window shopping and drinking smoothies. Though in my mind I often thought of her as the same eight year old little girl I’d left at home when I went away to school, she had apparently become a fledgling adult overnight. She had opinions and specific tastes and so many questions. I felt pride blossom deep in my chest that she would come to me with these questions, because while they sometimes made me cringe throughout my whole body, she knew as well as I did that I would always always always be honest with her.

And so we learned, car ride after car ride, that we enjoyed each other’s company.

I made trips home and she made trips to see me and over the years we tried to build something more meaningful, to dig into what it means and will mean to be sisters to each other for all our lives. We shared our disappointments and victories and heartaches, but often irregularly, still sharply aware of the near decade between us.

When she told me she wanted to move to New York for a year, I encouraged her wholeheartedly but hid hesitation behind my excitement. We hadn’t lived in the same home for 13 years. We hadn’t even lived in the same state for nine years. She would need me, need my help and my support and my guidance and my knowledge of the subway system. Did we even really like each other?

As it turns out, we do. We really really like each other.

And she did need me. She faced rejection and I hugged her tight and wiped her tears and helped her craft new cover letters. She got terribly homesick and we tracked down a bar playing the Broncos game. She got lost over and over again and I helped her find her way. She needed time to get on her feet and we shared a bed for nearly three months.

What I didn’t anticipate was how I’d grow to need her. I wasn’t prepared for the comfort I’d feel in coming home to her wide open face and arms when I was sick. I’d forgotten how good it felt to be near someone who knew so much of you and your history, who knew who you were and why you were and loved you without judgment because or in spite of it all. I couldn’t have known the full body bliss I’d experience napping with her in the grass in our favorite park, bellies full of pizza and lemonade.

And now she’s gone away on her next adventure and we again have too many miles between us. 900 miles might be fewer than 1800 but it’s a hell of a lot more than three and the subway won’t take me to Nashville.

So I miss her, send her memes that make me think of her, and thank the universe for the sweet opportunity we had to fall deeply in love as sisters.