Sisters. Motherhood. Love.

  

Sisters are the best, right?! I have two. I’m smack dab in the middle of a sweet and sour, gooey, delicious, and slightly spicy sister sandwich. We’ve been through the years that made us who we are, together. We are who we are, in no small part, because we had each other. I have developed a very special bond with my big sis, because we became mothers at the same time. Our first pregnancies overlapped. She has two boys, I have three girls, and we talk about them all the time. We have so much in common right now, it’s insane.

My younger sister is and always will be my baby sister. She’s eight years younger, and I remember helping to change her diapers, carrying her around in a football hold, and even using her as our “baby Carrie” as my big sister and I plopped her tiny baby body in a little wagon and pulled her up our back pasture hill (very steep, very dangerous, and we had one worried mom to deal with later) in an attempt to replicate life in a little house on the prairie. I have occasionally accidentally called my daughters by my little sis’s name. It just pops out! She’s the baby I’ve known the longest. It is hard to describe how special she is to me. AND now, I hear wedding bells in the not-too-distant future for her. What?! This is blowing my mind right now, and I have to write to get through this. This blog is therapeutic for me! Folks, this girl…

She probably doesn’t realize how much I value talking with her on the phone. She lives in Columbus -not a terrible drive – but I don’t get to see her nearly enough. So, when she calls me to chat, I’ve recently recognized how I tend to drop everything to make sure I can give her as much of my attention as possible. Difficult with kids. But, I feel that nagging feeling in my gut that one day soon, she won’t need me.

She finds me interesting! Me! Boring, everyday, busy with the mundane, stay-at-home mom Me! As part of a class project for her degree in film studies, my little sis created a beautiful short film capturing my life at the time (motherhood with two young kids). She finds beauty and mystery in the everyday. Even as a young, hip, social college student, she empathized with me in my time: motherhood.

Now, as I look at my little sis during her time, I see a beautiful, powerful, intelligent, successful, young woman. This is her time. She is at the beginning of her prime. I want to do everything I can to make her wedding day shine! I want to provide her with a glimpse of how important she is to me. I still tend to think of her as a sweet little toddler, whose crib I begged to have moved into my bedroom as a little girl so that I could be the one to hear her and wake to comfort her at night when she needed me. That little girl gave me the gift of fulfilling my need to nurture long before I could have a family of my own. Now, she is drifting off into a new adventure in her life. I want her to know that I’m always gonna be there for her. Whether or not she chooses to become a mother is a whole new conversation that she is sure to be having with her fiancé. I want her to know that, no matter how much I joke around about pushing my agenda of filling every nook and cranny of the house with children, I support her decisions. I want her to know that I will always be a listening ear for any of the big or little pitches that life throws at her. Nothing will shake my bond with my baby sis. AND, I will always do my best to answer when she calls.