Are you sure she’s my sister?
Some have said that we couldn’t look more alike, and yet
couldn’t be more different. People have even asked if we’re twins,
yet she’s two years and five months older than I am.
She could hit a ball with a bat, and spike a bigger ball over
the net. She could even be in a pyramid with the other cheerleaders
and win scholarships to art classes with her amazing drawings and
charcoal images. My sister.
Are you sure she’s my sister?
Some have said that we couldn’t look more alike, and yet couldn’t be more different. People have even asked if we’re twins, yet she’s two years and five months older than I am.
She could hit a ball with a bat, and spike a bigger ball over the net. She could even be in a pyramid with the other cheerleaders and win scholarships to art classes with her amazing drawings and charcoal images. My sister.
I was part of the high school newspaper and also the locally famed fourth grade spelling bee champ. Numbers were a foreign language, and still are.
Our parents must have shaken their heads when it was obvious that my talents were in no way sports or mathematically related, as I had absolutely no eye-hand coordination or concept of how percentages worked. I was the one who would do a complete 360, trying to make some sort of contact with the softball, with a bat clutched awkwardly in my clumsy grasp. A foul ball was better than three strikes. At least I’d touched the ball.
The last one picked for any sports team, but among the first chosen to play word games; not a lot of call for a triple word score on the field. My only hope was when my athletically gifted best friend would take pity on me and pick me, only to shove me in the outfield somewhere, where I would pray to my God and anyone else’s that the ball wouldn’t come my way.
In all fairness, our parents would read my early writings and attend her volleyball games and smile with the same pride for us both. Years after my brush with fame in the fourth grade, I ran across the photo in the paper that my dad had saved. I was so touched. But to a kid, the grass is always greener on the other side of the talent lawn.
I would envy my sister’s sporting ability, and her artistic flair. My stick people really do look like kindling.
When we were kids, she tried to teach me to catch a ball, just so we could play a simple game of catch. It was more like “Throw and Drop.” But, her patience paid off when she taught me how to ride a bike, by pushing me down the neighbors’ driveway, as I wobbled precariously into the cul-de-sac, on my first two-wheeler. In retrospect, maybe she wasn’t trying to teach me; she just simply pushed me down the hill. I learned about momentum. And brakes. I passed on that bit of accidental skill to the girl down the street.
This has evolved into our adulthood. Her artistry has taken on an interior designer’s finesse. Her home is warm and inviting and each piece of furniture and decor was picked with an expert’s touch.
My house has a collection of styles. I am more eclectic in my tastes, as the wall of vintage tin signs and clocks can attest in the kitchen and the mahogany wood pieces in the living room.
Our differences were stark, and for me, a little hard to swallow, sometimes.
When my best friend’s older brother nick-named me Little Suzie, I wondered how I would ever come out from behind my sister’s shadow.
One thing we always did well together, was sing. Actually, we sounded horrendous, but we’d have the best time, making up words to songs on the radio that are barely discernable.
I give you, “Everytime you go away, you take a piece of meat with you,” (You take a piece of me with you) by Paul Young, “Everybody thinks she’s a spazz” (Everybody thinks she’s a spy – Bette Davis Eyes) by Kim Carnes and some that are too naughty to put in print.
It occurs to me now, some (ahem) years later, that those differences had a way of bringing us together. Some differences are not as different as we think. We are both really bad singers.
