Working under the assumption that the only rule to guest blogging is that there are no rules, I’m going to publish something I posted on my blog last month. It was in honor of my sister’s 23rd birthday. As the NBC promos used to say, “If you haven’t seen it before, it’s new to you!”
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It’s my sister’s birthday today.
When I realized I was going to have to step in and be her parent so many years ago I made promises to myself: to never hit, to always listen, to remember that in order to get respect you must also give it, to let her just be who she needed to be and to teach her tolerance and try and instill kindness towards others. I was young and I made mistakes but none, I hope, that did permanent damage. That’s about all you can hope for somedays.
She doesn’t know it but during some very dark, lonely times she was the spark that forced me to keep going. The person I am today was largely shaped by the person I needed to be for her. There’s no way to know what I would have been like had she not come into my life, but I can’t imagine that my life would have been any better. I’m certain that I would have felt the loss, even if I couldn’t name it.
There have been trials and tribulations, but they’ve been greatly outnumbered by the sheer joy of knowing her, of watching her figure out who she is and who she wants to be. Along the way I’ve experienced her joys and her pains. There were some things I was able to buffer her from even as I wondered if I should, if I wasn’t perhaps doing her a disservice by not allowing her to stumble and fall and learn from those mistakes. But the times when I couldn’t help her came often enough so I justified my meddling. The day that I had to say to her, “I’m extremely disappointed in you and I can not fix this” was one of the hardest, most painful, heart-renching days of my life. (It was a bold faced lie though. I would have turned things inside out and upside down to set things straight. And I almost had to.) It needed to be said, however, to wake her up from the daze that she was under. It’s such a fine line, to support someone while at the same time kicking them in the ass.
On these days I remember her first day of kindergarden. She was so excited, finally going to ‘big girl’ school. I worried that when the time came she, like so many children I’d heard about, wouldn’t want to be left behind. I shouldn’t have worried. She entered that classroom all smiles, not once bothering to look back. That’s what I’ve been striving for all these years: to fill her with the sense of security and confidence that lets her step forward without that look back because she doesn’t need to see me to know that I’m there for her. Ready to support her in all things, but also ready to kick some ass, hers or anyone else’s if necessary.
I love this girl, but better than that, I like her, a lot.
patricia … Thanks for the chance to guest blog. ♥