the beautiful annoyance of a sister

is that my shirt?

my older sister hannah is the person who knows me better than any other soul on earth- thank god. she has what i like to call the gift of the gab, she can talk, it is one of the best things about her. the second hannah meets someone new i can see their shoulders drop in her presence, she extracts commonality with everyone she encounters and always makes sure whoever is in her light is seen and heard. through her monologs i learned to listen with ferocity and develop the skill of perception… i think this is why it think i love to write so much and also why i have a difficult time talking about myself (topic for another essay).

hannah and i used to naturally cling to each other on vacations, one look and we knew when it was time to go for a walk or grab a frozen pina colada or get ice cream for the 5th night in a row. this past week we were at our extended family’s beach trip which has been a tradition since before the two of us were born. it’s a strange feeling to be in the same place year over year and feel the cells of the experience start to metaphorize with each summer that passes. hannah has dated her current boyfriend for a few years now and a future engagement is palpable, this trip was one of the first times in a long time the two of us have spent extended amounts of time together without her significant other like we did when we were kids, tweens and teens.

hannah and i were the last ones about to leave our cousins house after eating strawberry rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream on the porch when our other cousin texted us asking if we had “abby” her 4-year-old daughter’s beloved stuffed purple rabbit. we looked down to find abby sitting ominously next to us, our gazes returned to each other and said, “we need to return abby” at the same time. mid-way on our journey to save abby we stopped at my parent’s house which is in between the cousin beach rentals and grabbed our bikes from the creaky garage, for whatever reason i was anti-riding bikes that night and wanted to walk instead, but hannah persisted. we passed by the “showplace” which is an iconic (to us) ice cream parlor where everyone who works there also performs at the conjoining theatre, this means that the entire ice cream experience is meant to be musical, and the employees wear white and red striped outfits and interact with the crowd. growing up hannah loved the showplace (she is a naturally theatrical person), i loathed it and would wail to avoid being put on the spot and made to sing into a microphone (which upon retrospect, i think is fair!!!!!). as we passed, the employees were wiping down tables and performing closing shift duties, hannah turns to me and says, “oh my god i just saw a showplace teen pour chocolate sauce from the bottle into her mouth” i laugh out loud and say “i love that. thank you so much for telling me.” she laughs and replies, “you are so welcome” we deliver abby to the arms of our little cousin and encroach upon an idyllic sight, all the kids are sprawled on the floor exhausted and pink from the sun and all the adults are on the couch equally exhausted but content that the day is over and was successful. we bike back, i start notice houses i never paid much attention to have the most beautiful glow of candles in the window, i hear laughter come from various backyards almost like an unorganized symphony, we see teens scurrying down to the beach with bottles clanking in their drawstring backpacks.

we are almost home when hannah asks me, “do you know what i would kill for right now?” i nervously say, “what?” (i feared she would want to get ice cream which we’ve had almost every night including earlier this evening) she says quietly, “a diet coke” i laugh and say “SAME!” after a minute of thinking she says, “let’s bike to 7-11” my immediate reaction is “no” why? i can’t say. hannah has always been more of a “free spirit” in comparison to me, i find myself defaulting to a role of sensibility to ground her buoyancy as if she would float away without me. she convinces me to bike the extra blocks to 7-11 (as she always does). we pass by cops gossiping about the teens they are going to “swarm” later and we roll our eyes at each other because it feels like just yesterday, we were those teens drinking mysterious substances out of water bottles on the dunes (hannah more than me). in 7-11 i grab a bottle of diet coke (my preference) and she asks for a medium fountain soda for her DC (her preference). upon seeing the medium size of her fountain soda she mutters to me, disappointed “ah i wish i got a large” i ask the woman behind the counter if she could exchange it for the large size, she says yes trepidatiously and starts discussing the systematic nuances of refunding the medium for a large. hannah and i look at each other and say “don’t worrrrry about it, it’s vacationnnnnn charge us for the extra large, no need for a refund” (hannah and i talk exactly the same with an identical inflection in our voice) the cashier smiles, i can tell she is a bit of a hard-ass but likes us, maybe we remind her of her and her own sister.

we get back on our bikes with sodas in tow, hannah calls back to me, “i want to be one of the teens!!! i am going to put on 365 while we ride” delivered in her dramatic exuberance that charms everyone she comes across. as she plays 365 from her phone i can see her little shoulders dance through the darkness. i laugh out loud, not because it was particularly funny, but because i can tell the two of us feel so unincumbered by our age at this very moment. for some reason while we are on our bikes tonight, we feel as we did at ages 7 and 13 and 16 and 21, talking about nothing at all and feeling so smooth we could slip off the edge of the earth. as we bike up to my parent’s glimmering cottage, reality sinks in and i have the dread in the pit of my stomach that this will be one of the last times we will be able to have this insignificant moment just the two of us together untethered by spouses and kids. we returned to our twin beds in a room similar to the one we shared growing up (when her boyfriend is here i have to share a room with our little brother, which is great, but does not have the same nostalgic twinge), we both slept so soundly, maybe because we felt that for a night everything stood still and was as it always used to be.

^ i wrote that without the intention of publishing it, more of a way of anthologizing it for my own personal memory, but the day after the magical nighttime bike ride, hannah and i got into one of the most cathartic and hilarious fights the two of us have had since we were teens. i won’t go into the details but it involves a copy of black swans by eve babitz (one of my favorite books) that i lent to her (without clearly articulating that i would like the book to stay in good condition and knowing that she would bring it to the beach) when i saw the extremely sandy and wilted book in the musty garage and i scolded hannah for letting it get so tattered (i honestly wish she wasn’t in the garage when i found it, i really wasn’t that mad, just frustrated for .5 seconds in the moment and wouldn’t have said anything otherwise) this caused hannah to be ~defensive~ given my lack of communication and brought to head a tiff we had earlier in the week where i blamed her for making us late to a pilates class (oh my god this feels ever dumber reading it back, i am so aware of how trivial it sounds). the crux of the fight is that i internalize that hannah thinks i am uptight and fear she will make fun of me for wanting to keep my things looking nice or arriving places too early. she on the other hand, internalizes that i don’t think she “has it together” (which she does). we screamed at each other for a minute before i turned around to go outside, as soon as i reached the stairs we both burst into fits of laughter at the exact same time, the silliness of our out of character adolescent-like rage washing over our adult bodies.

over the past 5 years or so i have gotten a lot less uptight, i don’t think anyone who meets me now would describe me that way at all (i still like to be on time and keep my things looking nice). hannah on the other end of the spectrum has tamed her wilder instincts and accomplished an incomprehensible amount that will never cease to impress me. the two of us have drifted towards a healthier middle ground in our lives more akin to one another in our separate spaces, yet when we are in each other’s presence we revert back to who we were when our bad qualities seemed to engulf our personalities. sisters simultaneously bring out the best and the worst versions of each other in a way that therapists, friends and partners would kill to have a sliver of. any coat of armor built through the development of time will be stripped away by just a glance of your sister who knew you when you didn’t know how to curl your eyelashes or tell that one boy you have a crush on how you feel (actually i still don’t know how to do either of these things successfully…). i think the reason why fights among sisters ripen faster than others is because there is no hiding from a sister, it’s as if she knows the structural integrity of your bones better than you do. she’s seen you act out in your most shameful ways that you have since worked hard to extinguish, and also seen you silently demonstrate the depths of your humility when you didn’t think anyone was watching. to be seen so clearly is a beautiful and terrifying examination i try to avoid at all costs, but when i am around my sister i am confronted with the fluorescence of who i am as though i am swallowing cherry cough syrup. i hope i keep tasting that sticky cherry substance forever.

text your sister and tell her you are thinking of her (or brother! or parent! or a best friend who feels like a sister!!!!!)

xoxoxoxoxoxo

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!