I.
I'm soo bored.. codee and i are looking up new music lol but yeah.
i wish you were still transferring.. home is so not the same without you :( i guess i'll live though.. i just really miss everything like it was... and i won't even see you for your birthday!!!! sooo sad. i'll ship you a cake lol or something cool love you and miss you!
Leaving for college is never easy, one way or another. For me, the hardest part was leaving my sisters, the two people who have been a part of my life for the past fourteen years. Since our parents separated, the amount of time the three of us spent together increased exponentially; we went to movies together, we went to football games together, we ran the dullest of errands together.
Now, with me being a little over seven hours away from my family, any means of communication has been utilized. Facebook has consumed my life, and my text message inbox is filled to maximum capacity every day. I look at my calendar constantly, marking off the days until I can see my two life-long best friends again.
II.
Eighty percent of individuals in Western countries have siblings.
For many of that eighty percent, our relationship with our siblings will be the longest relationship we will ever have with another person. If that is the case, logic would have that eighty percent make an effort to take care of that bond, especially if it is going to be the longest in our lives. That relationship should be one of the most positive connections in our lives. I want my sisters to be there with me to always support me, to cry with me, to laugh with me. I want the longest relationship I will ever have in my life to be the one I can always count on.
I have always known my sisters and they have always known me. We have seen each other at our best and, subsequently, we have seen each other at our worst. We have attended each other’s school events, even though we grumbled and complained through them, because we were forced to cancel plans with friends just to show up. Our bonding will always be filled with potholes and traffic, but with a car filled with three girls, who inherently love each other, the hours spent on the road will never be looked back upon as wasted.
Thumbing through the book Sisters by Carol Saline and Sharon J. Wohlmuth, I found by chance in the library, I found a story of a pair of sisters that was heartbreaking and, at the same time, inspiring. Becky Young’s twin sister, Nancy, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer when they were 49-years-old. When Nancy chose to spend her last days “as she had spent her first,” Becky put her life and career on hold to move back in with their parents.
Toward the end, the cancer got to Nan’s brain. She was full of morphine. Really out of it and not making much sense… Then, one night, I heard her breathing change over the intercom. Our parents had gone to bed and I slipped into her room alone. I’d made a pact with Nan that no matter what, she’d depart this world like she came into it, beside me, the way we’d been together in the womb. I crawled in bed with my body up against her, holding my sister in my arms, the closest person in my life.
To die, knowing that my sisters were there, loving me as every last minute in my life passed is something that I want to experience. If I push my sisters away every time they irritate me or if they push me away every time I irritate them, every inch I push them back will multiply. The distance would grow so great that in my last hours, no jet in the world could cover the distance for them to be by my side, heart and soul.
III.
Thirty-six percent of people say they have become closer to their siblings with age.
“Daddy and I are getting divorced.”
My sisters and I stared at Mom in confusion before we started sobbing and shaking our heads. I tucked myself into the corner of the couch, hugging a throw pillow as I cried, wedged between the armrest and my dad. He had his arm around me, trying to pull me into his arms, but I refused to move. He was just as deserving of my anger as my mother was. I had friends whose parents were divorced, and I accepted that fact along with them. It was their family that was separated, no longer whole. I never thought that my family was going to be another statistic about marriage and divorce. The foundations of my life—my parents and the security that came with their marriage—were fatally shaken. But my life wasn’t the only life affected. My sisters were suffering the same pain I was that summer day in 2004. That was when it hit me how important my sisters were in my life.
I asked my sister, Ceejay, to describe how the three of us got along: “We get along like we’re best friends… minus the grudges that best friends can have. We’re always there for each other… and can basically read each others’ minds. It’s like we’re one person who got split in three.” I hadn’t thought about it before, but her words carry truth in them. We really are a single person divided into three, each of us holding valued characteristics that the others don’t have.
I am the one who tolerates change in our lives, no matter how big the changes are. When our parents separated, I resented it at first, but after awhile, I accepted it as something that I couldn’t fix. When Mom started dating her current boyfriend, I hated him as much as my sisters did, but in the end, I found peace knowing that he made my mom happy. At the same time, I worked to help my sisters adjust to the change, even though it wasn’t easy. Being the oldest, I knew that I had to lead by example, especially during the drastic changes in our lives. Ceejay is the poster-child for self-sacrifice. She is the first to put aside her personal needs and wants to make sure the rest of the family is taken care of. I can’t remember how many times I burst into her room with a boy-problem or fashion-crisis, and instead of yelling at me for interrupting her nap or homework, she let me in and helped me out. Last, but in no way least, Codee is the fighter. She’s the sister who is stubborn as hell and packs a ridiculously solid punch for a fourteen-year-old girl. She is the first of us to stand up and defend the family if the situation calls for it. I remember when a girl at school, as a result of a large case of karma on my part, confronted me about an issue only to end up insulting how my parents raised me to behave. When I told Codee, her immediate response would have been bleeped out, save for her demand to “kick her ass.”
Because of shared history and the strength of the bonds between them, siblings can also provide one another with support, guidance, and companionship,” says Dr. Patricia Noller of the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research on sibling relationships during the teen years says that the nature of sibling relationships makes it very possible that siblings will become “confidantes, although others have shown that the warmth of the sibling relationship is the best predictor of both the level of [sharing private thoughts and feelings] and of emotional understanding perceived by the siblings.
Siblings can either connect immediately in childhood, a connection that continues to grow through life, or they can develop a closeness later on in their growth, both physically and emotionally. An example of this is the relationship between Ann and Joan Petitt. These sisters grew up in a family with an alcoholic mother, and a father who ate compulsively, had a mistress, and was a workaholic. The only thing they figured they had in common with each other was the five brothers in their family. “I really wasn’t aware of [Joan]. It was like she grew up in another family. I never knew she wanted a sister, and I never knew I needed a sister,” Ann says.
Consequently, Ann’s assumption of indifference was translated by her younger sister, Joan, as loathing: “I didn’t think she liked me at all, and if my own sister didn’t like me, I must be defective. That affected me all my life.” Eventually, Ann made an escape from the family, moving to Charlotte, North Carolina to find herself, driving an even bigger wedge between herself and Joan. It wasn’t until Joan and her brother made the effort to visit Ann that their relationship began to form. As Ann put it, “I realize there is a bond here connecting us that you can’t have with anyone else but a sister, and that’s real good for me. I feel like I’ve walked through a doorway into a new world.”
IV.
Fifty-eight percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce.
While parents may find it difficult to meet their children’s needs for empathy, support, and encouragement during the period of separation and divorce, it is possible that children with at least one sibling may find some of what they seek in their parents in the ongoing relationship they have with their sibling. As Ceejay says:
I think we grew closer because we had to be there for each other since we were the only ones who knew what the other was really feeling... and we just always took care of each other... It's like they stayed together in order to make sure we were raised right, but then when they separated we had to grow up on our own 'cause we weren't really ready for it.
The separation of our parents made the three of us dissect the role of a mother and take on a third of the responsibilities. Ceejay did most of the cooking, cleaning, and advising, especially stepping up after our father fractured his back and needed constant care. I acted as the chauffer, making sure everyone got to appointments and meetings on time, as well as running errands like going to the grocery or dropping bills off at the post office. Codee took on the role of the comedic relief, keeping our lives from getting too serious for a trio of teenagers trying to make it through puberty and high school. When put together, we worked with and around each other to make it through the day, laughing and bickering the entire time. As Margaret Mead’s sister put it, “You can tell your sister to go to hell in twelve different languages and if you need a quarter, she’ll lend you a quarter.”
At the same time, divorce may cause a rift in the sibling relationship. Siblings may assign blame differently for the divorce or even choose to live with different parents. Another means of division between siblings is when one sibling is “put in charge” of another when a parent needs assistance in child-supervision. As an eleven-year-old girl, the eldest of three, describes her little brother, “We look out for him, you know, watch out for him and stuff. But sometimes he doesn’t like what we’re doing and he gets upset with us, so we’re trying to look after him.” Along the same lines, a fifteen-year-old girl describes what it is like being looked after by an older brother: “Sometimes it pisses me off, but at other times it’s like, I understand why he does it. Like he’s protective, which is—sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad.”
V.
haha you think you are cool. how is life? mine is sucky at the [moment]. you need to come home :( and [Gossip Girl] and [One Tree Hill] weren't on tonite :( love you! xxoo
Coming around the corner of my old high school, I couldn’t help but smile like a fool as my sisters came into view. The pair of them were a good hundred yards away, but I knew they could see me as clearly as I could see them. Codee, who was the taller of the two and looked the most like me with her button-like nose and full lips, was in front. She was wearing the black gym pants that I had borrowed from my best friend, Erin, almost six months ago and forgot to give back. Ceejay had her phone out, checking the messages she had gotten during the school day, completely oblivious to who was in front of her. That phone is her life-support. The black t-shirt she was wearing made her already tiny frame seem even tinier. Codee recognized me first, despite my haggard appearance from the eleven-hour bus ride that deposited me in Ohio at seven o’clock that morning.
Throwing off her book bag and tossing the papers in her hand aside, she barely managed an “Oh, my God!” before a blood-curdling scream erupted from her as she sprinted towards me. Tears sprung from her eyes, the streams of moisture inky-black from her mascara. Her body hit me hard, almost taking me down onto the pavement of the parking lot. She was sobbing. I was laughing. I was thrilled Operation: Fall Break Surprise went off without a hitch.
Ceejay, finally recognizing who Codee had almost-tackled, ran up to the pair of us after safely putting her phone away. Her reaction wasn’t quite as dramatic: “Oh, my God! What are you doing here?!” Letting go of Codee, I pulled Ceejay into a hug before taking off my glasses to wipe my eyes. I had been laughing so hard, I had started crying. Codee sank to the ground, still sobbing.
“I came to see you,” I told Ceejay. “I missed you guys too much not to.”