My big sister

When I'm sitting around in a group and we're introducing ourselves and someone has the great idea to "share something no one knows about you!" I often bust out with "I am the oldest of five kids." It's not a particularly fascinating and/or juicy factoid, but I feel like it's one of the most defining things about me. At least, it was the one thing people knew about me when I was growing up and going to small schools with the rest of my siblings- "Oh, Maggie's the oldest of the [Maggie's Highly Google-able Maiden Name] kids!" (And my poor sisters, never to be known as Their Names, but Maggie's Little Sisters. Can I help my awesomeness?) 

Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few days. I'm having a new baby, a girl, who will have an older brother, what is that like, I've never had an older sibling, she'll be so different from me, (THANK GOD), will Jack be a good big brother, oh wait I DID have an older sibling...

For a few months? A school year? I can't really remember, but my cousin lived with us when I was six or seven years old. My aunt adopted E from Columbia when she was 9 years old and they lived in a small town close to Oregon, which my six- or seven-year-old brain remembers as being the longest drive in the universe. For whatever reason things weren't going well, and when E was in 5th or 6th grade, she moved into my house for a bit and went to my elementary school.

The biggest thing I would tell you about E is that she. did. not. like. me.

These are all cloudy hazy memories and I honestly can't tell you what it was really like. I was just vaguely aware that an older girl had moved into my house and was not impressed with her litter of much younger cousins. I remember cautiously walking into whatever space was hers and getting roundly scolded and shoved out. I remember walking near the school- she was with a friend and maybe I was a few feet behind?- and they were being sort of vulgar (5th or 6th grade vulgar) and using words I'd never heard. I remember my dad helping her with her math homework. I remember her Older Girl things: her clothes, her shoes and bags, hair brushes, lip glosses. She was often mean and nasty to me, but that didn't prevent me from wanting to dress like her, act like her, use her stuff.

My family moved to an Air Force base in Sicily and not only was I the oldest again, I was beginning to build an understanding of what it was to BE The Oldest. I had chores, the list of things I was not allowed to do was ten feet long, I was convinced my mother didn't like me, etc. etc. And one spring or summer my aunt decided to treat my cousin to a trip to Europe for her 16th birthday. I was eleven. And she still hated me.

We were driving somewhere in the van (probably to one of my dad's beloved ancient ruins) and I think I was humming to myself in the back seat. E turned around and gave me a look that could instantly shrivel a grape. "Could you please stop making that noise?" She whipped her head back around and I have never forgotten the embarrassment. She was in a perpetual sour mood and had no qualms about saying mean and nasty things to me, but I still wanted her to think I was cool. Or, you know, as cool as an eleven-year-old could possibly be.

We would visit my aunt and cousin in the summers and these were the times E seemed to not think I was a piece of lint. As the oldest girl I usually got to sleep in her room and oh, I loved her room. There was a huuuuge poster of Michael J. Fox taped above her bed. We listened to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper. (One thing about being the oldest- there is no one to influence your musical preferences. Phillip, thanks to his much older brother, recognizes trillions of horrible 80s songs, but I only know the handful of things I heard in my cousin's room.) She had dozens of nail polish bottles lined up on her dresser and it was the most thrilling thing in the world when she did "makeovers" on me with actual real live makeup. For a while she was on some dance team and would perform her routines for me. She had boyfriends and her own phone and a queen-sized bed and OMG SHE WAS SO COOL.

I think, after a while, she liked "impressing" me. The summer I turned 16 my parents let me stay overnight at E's very own apartment. We went to a rodeo (that's how far away she lived, a RODEO) and there were boys there and beer bottles and while we behaved and got home at a reasonable hour, I suspected she was only home because she had her 16-year-old cousin in tow. Whatever, it was super fun.

I wanted her to love me, but I could never quite tell if she hated me, liked me or simply tolerated me. She was awfully busy being angry at lots of people and now that I am Older and Wiser I can certainly understand a lot of what was happening in ways I didn't then.

I am 29 and E is 34 and I see her a few times a year, for holidays and family things. She doesn't seem so much older than me anymore. She got married after I did and had her first baby a few months before I had Jack. She had her second baby a few months ago, and I'm about to have one in the next few weeks. I last saw her at a little family reunion last weekend. She grabbed my elbow and said, "Before you go, I have something for you." Inside a gift bag was one of the cutest baby girl outfits and E was smiling as I fawned all over it. "I'm so excited you're having a girl," she said. "I'm so excited to meet her. It's so fun to have our kids close in age. It's too bad we don't live closer."

She's the closest thing I have to an older sibling. I think she likes me now.

Comments

[Jess]

That's such a sweet ending to a bittersweet story. I'm glad you guys are close now. My cousins are the closest things I have to brothers and I've always wished we were closer.

[Jen]

I like my little sister now and she was the biggest pain in the world when she was younger! She grew up nicely.

[Lindsay]

Sibling relationships are so weird. I find the one I am close with at any point in time is always changing, and the one that DRIVES ME CRAZZZZY is always changing too. And how weird is it that in the end, your sibs are the only ones who know you for all your years of your life?

[Maureen]

Very nice story, Maggie. But I have to comment about the effect of birth order on musical taste, because I, as you know, am the youngest of 6, and therefore have the pop music taste and knowledge of a person ten years my senior. I never knew this until college when I discovered that not only did my peers not know every word of "Come Dancin'" by heart, they had never even HEARD of the Kinks in the first place. If I had been cooler and listened to something other than They Might Be Giants and various musicals while in high school, I would have had a more well-rounded pop music education, but I was a gigando nerd, so that didn't happen. The Kinks, Huey Louis and the News, The Go-Go's. That was me. (I am currently 32, for what it's worth.)

[Lindsay]

I think she was adopted from ColOmbia. Well, unless your aunt adopted her from a university. That's always possible. :o)

I kind of have the opposite problem. I'm the youngest, so I don't know what it's like having a bunch of younger people around. Largely, I liked that. Plus, I was always close to my siblings (especially my big brother) growing up. There were a lot of negatives, though. Position in a family is such a weird thing. You'd think it wouldn't matter and that it wouldn't effect anything, but it effects so much. Perspective from each position is so completely different.

[Kate P]

What a great story. Isn't it neat to discover that adulthood can be such the equalizer?

I'm the middle but I'm the oldest (older) girl, so I didn't have a big sister, either--and there was a time when I idolized my older girl-cousin, too!

[Kate P]

Forgot to say to Maureen: I'm the same age, and I'm a bit envious--I didn't get the musical education you did until I met a very cool friend senior year of high school. Then I went to college with someone who was on the younger end of 16 kids--her music taste was wide-ranging and she loved Barry Manilow and ABBA!

P.S. to the Lindsays--I can't keep you straight. . .

[Wickedly Scarlett]

Isn't it strange how we kind of "catch" up with all of those people who always seemed so much older than us? And how we suddenly understand things that would never have made sense at age 11 or even 16? I'm so glad that your relationship has improved, and that in a way, you do have something of an older sibling. I always liked being the oldest in our household, but I also love having my older sister to talk to now to relate to in ways that my younger sister just can't understand yet.

[Christina]

You are the greatest writer. Have I told you that lately? Well,you are. And that is a very honest and sweet story and I can relate, a little. My older sister and I didn't live together for many years (split custody - whose genius idea was that?!) and she often treated me like lint when I visited or talked to her on the phone. But when we hit adulthood suddenly we could relate to each other so much better and now she's like a close friend.
Anyway, I'm sure your daughter will be a joy from Day One and Jack will be a great big brother too. :-)