Sisters
never were there such devoted sisters.
My sister is four years younger than me, the same age difference as her son and daughter. My nephew is seven, my niece is three.
I picked them up at the airport and it wasn’t even two minutes into the hour-long drive to my house before they demanded control of the radio.
“Play the fart song! Play Hallelujah!”
My sister grabbed my phone and starting DJ-ing a symphony of sounds that one should only hear in the bathroom while suffering from Cyclospora.
On the way home I drove them through the McDonald’s drive thru.
“My dad doesn’t let us have this, he says that the McDonald’s corporation has murdered people for land. But if these are your rules, Auntie … I’ll have a cheeseburger, no sauce, no meat. Just bun and cheese,” my nephew stated.
The first and last time he happily abided by my rules during his visit.
I remember the picky eating days from when my son was younger, but my nephew approaches it like it’s an extreme sport. My niece however woke up the first morning they were here and casually asked me for
“Three hard boiled eggs, cold.”
During their stay she would ask me throughout the day to — crack her a cold one.
Raised in Southern California, my niece quickly adapted to our PNW lifestyle. Even though it was July, in the car with the windows down, she announced
“I love this cold weather!”
She quickly grew accustomed to fresh salmon daily. JC would catch it, filet it, cook it, and my niece would thank him kindly for the
“Good clean salmon.”
It didn’t take long for my sister to slip into the slow-paced life we enjoy here, either.
In between conference calls for her corporate tech job (I truly don’t understand what it is she does) you could find her in my kitchen pulling everything out of the pantry to whip up another batch of gluten-free cowboy cookies or stirring a huge stock-pot full of vegetable butts and chicken bones, like a witch over her cauldron.
After all her work calls (which sounded basically like a lot of: let’s circle back, incubator, accelerator, team building, mission statements) she’d lace up her sneakers and head out for a nature walk.
An hour later my sister would come in beaming with stained hands full of blackberries, huckleberries, and salmonberries.
“I found a patch of wild oregano!”
She squealed with the excitement of someone who had found a winning lottery ticket on the ground.
“Try some,” she insisted and stuck a mysterious looking leaf in my mouth.
A leaf that tasted not at all like oregano.
When she left to put in it a jar to root, I spit it out and quickly googled to make sure she wasn’t poisoning me for all the times I brushed her hair too hard when she was little.
She wasn’t, it was wild oregano.
One day she came home from one of her discovery walks and said
“I found some cool old dishes on the side of the road …”
I stopped her in her tracks.
“I know, I saw them there a couple weeks ago, please don’t bring them into my house.”
“But … but … but …”
“No.”
She looked at me dejected, a look I have seen many times before when I am unwilling to hop on board with one of her cockamamie schemes. She is our mother’s daughter after all.
The second JC walked in from his afternoon of good clean salmon fishing, she said to him,
“JC! There’s some cool old dishes up the road.”
“I know! You should snag ‘em,” he replied.
In all my life I have never seen my sister up and out of the house faster. She grabbed a reusable shopping bag and hightailed it down the driveway.
“Please, promise me you won’t throw these away as soon as I leave,”
she begged while washing the three-weeks (and fifty-years) of dirt off them.
I had prepared my kitchen according to my nephew’s rider:
Trader Joe’s - Chocolate milk, silver dollar pancakes, whipped cream.
Costco - Dino nuggets, organic maple syrup, White Claws. Wait, that last one was for me.
In the morning while I was boiling eggs for princess, he opened the fridge to inspect the provisions.
“We have the same exact chocolate milk at home, and the same syrup, and the same whipped cream … “ as if any of this was coincidental.
My niece joined in by pointing to the three brown bananas sweating on my counter and exclaiming
“We have the exact same bananas at home!”
My niece is a perfect combination of my sister and me.
Fiery red hair and grumpy in the mornings — my sister.
Perfectly painted toe nails and a purse full of sparkly lip glosses — me.
Doesn’t stay mad for long — my sister.
Wants to watch Love Island in bed while scrolling on my phone — me.
When she told me she’d licked the kitchen sink — my sister.
When I told her maybe she shouldn’t because it’s dirty, and she said
“Maybe you should clean it.” — me.
When she pees her pants — my sister, fine — both of us.
When I was in the shower, and she took my phone, called a man ten times, hung up when he answered, then proceeded to send him seven pictures of herself on the tire swing — drunk me.
When she sings “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah … HALLELUJAH!” at the top of her lungs randomly throughout the day — sadly, all of us now.
My nephew who has the most beautiful singing voice sticks to the classics: The Star-Spangled Banner and the German national anthem.
I’d forgotten the utter chaos that is having small children in the home, but now that they’ve gone, I ache for it.
It’s not quite the same hearing JC bellow “Hallelujah,” when he walks into a room, but I’ll take what I can get.
As the eldest daughter I’ve felt like a mother since I was four years old. I watched my sister mature into an adult, and I’m currently watching my son do the same.
Bittersweet when your babies are no longer babies.
She’s the same red-headed, stubborn, crazy busy, wild child I’ve loved these past forty-years, but something magical has changed within her since becoming a mom.
While holding onto that mischievous twinkle in her eye, she’s settled into a softness, a patience, a quiet confidence as a mother, and in life.
I noticed it more than ever this visit.
And though they messed up my Spotify algorithm, ruined my socks by wearing them outside, left little sticky hand prints on every surface, reprogrammed the TV remote, and covered my lawn in Nerf bullets — I am forever grateful to my sister for bringing those red-headed hellions into my life.
I really like your writing and I also live in the PNW so let’s be friends
This is great, this is why I love you 😂 ❤️