I spent a few hours on the phone with my sister last night. Our lives have ended up very different and now that we are older we are trying to narrow the gap between us. We have the same genes but had very different life circumstances.
She wanted to never make waves and I was born making them. At first I wanted to be like her but when realized it would never happen I was free to do what I wanted. I remember even now one time coloring together she stayed perfectly in the lines and how beautiful her page looked. My page was terrible my hand always slipped and there was the crayon outside the line. Once that happened my interest in coloring for the moment died and I left the page half done.
I really didn't understand that she was four years older and that her motor skills were ten times what mine were or that she had four more years of practice than I did. I yearned to be just like her because my parents really loved her. I knew this because they constantly said wonderful things about her. She was always respectful to them, she kept her room spotless, she had straight A's and practiced her piano lessons for two hours a day. She was perfect.
I am not saying they didn't love me because they did. The fact that they loved me despite my constant questioning of their authority, messy room, a report card that was celebrated with some "B's" mixed in with "Cs" and the fact that I refused to practice the piano. I never understood why girls were expected to play the piano. Even with that I was still loved not praised but loved anyway.
My sister now says my mother wanted to be a concert pianist. I can see now why my sister pushed to become the perfect piano player my mother imagined her to be. Especially after my mom got sick. My sister was old enough to see that things were not going well while I was told not to worry and I didn't.
While she was being perfect I was exiled to the basement where I built cites out of cardboard with stores and restaurants. I also held art classes there for the neighborhood kids with art supplies stolen from school. I only charged a small fee for the class. I loved art and often won contest at school. My dream was to decorate the bulletin boards at school for the holidays but you had to have grades like my sister's to be chosen. Art wasn't considered a talent like piano in our house but it made me happy.
With our effort to get to know each other my sister and I have found that we are the same in a lot of ways. The death of our mother made us different from other kids we knew a bond we are only sharing now. Ironically who we were as kids reversed when we became adults. When my dad remarried I had to learn to keep quiet and do what I was told perfectly. This was what was needed to be loved in the new household.
My sister's desire to be perfect left her when my mother died. She stopped cleaning her room, playing the piano or even ironing her clothes. With those perfect grades she got scholarship and left for college the summer my father remarried. She stopped trying to fit in and blazed her own path ultimately becoming the youngest female lawyer in her state.
Today we are more comfortable in our own skins and don't worry too about what other people think. The work ethic that was instilled in us by both of our parents has made us successful in whatever we have done professionally. Emotionally we are still a little too self reliant living in that fortress we built so many years ago. Today we are trying to be a little freer and happier and accepting of each other.
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