My little sister is three years younger than me and a good six inches shorter. Debbie doesn’t weigh enough to donate blood and when standing barefoot, does not reach five feet tall. So you may be wondering why, right before she left to go to Italy with me, my mother turned to her and said, “AND REMEMBER, WHILE YOU’RE AWAY, TRY NOT TO BE MEAN TO YOUR SISTER.”

…

Deb and I had a pretty typical sisterly relationship growing up. We got along most of the time but were not immune from bickering when tensions ran high. We were very different people though and while we enjoyed each other, we didn’t necessarily like to do the same things and spent lots of time apart with our separate friends. I know that I annoyed the crap out of her most of the time, just by being myself. (Read: sitting at the piano singing showtunes for hours, taping Broadway show advertisements cut out from the NY Times on our bedroom closet doors, getting straight A’s without even trying and then gloating about it, etc.)

When I look back on our childhood and I put myself in my sister’s shoes, I am filled with empathy and the uncomfortable understanding that most of the time, the world seemed to revolve around Me and My Shows and my need for attention until I left the house and the family could breathe a little bit without me around. I wonder what that must have felt like and I am certain that it more than a little bit contributed to my sister’s very sincere need to not be in my shadow and to do her own thing and to make it known, thank you very much, that her name is Debra, not Laura and she is Different.

 

Traveling with someone can be very intense but I wasn’t really worried about packing up and hanging out with Debbie for twelve days in some foreign countries. My sister and I lived under the same roof for most of our lives so I knew pretty much how it would play out. In fact, the issues surrounding my dad’s health have brought us closer in recent months and I rightly guessed that it would make things go even more smoothly.

Most of the time, everything was easy. One of my favorite aspects of the trip was watching my sister discover the world on her own. I remember traveling for the first time to Greece when I was 20 and how I felt the world unraveling before me, how it seemed so much bigger than I thought but also so much smaller. There were so many times in Italy when I just stood and watched her enjoy it, her food, her picture taking, her smile. I couldn’t help but smile myself.

But I was also not immune to being the Same Old Big Sister and she naturally stepped in and played her role as well which was Snap At Laura To Remind Her I’m Not An Idiot. (Which is why my mother was all BE NICE TO YOUR SISTER. Deb often has a razor sharp tongue and can be quite brutal but about 99% of the time, I deserve to be snapped at anyway. The thing is, I often erupt in tears when she does it because…well. I have no idea. You explain it to me. I’m tired.)

In Deb’s defense, she is constantly being labeled as “the moody, snippy one” while I am labeled “the sensitive one” and even though she does snap at me sometimes, she often does it when she feels cornered or overwhelmed and I am often the culprit of making her feel this way. And I saw it on the trip several times. And I hated it.

The horrifying thing I realized was that I could almost watch myself about to say something that I knew would piss her off and then I would say it anyway. I knew, I just KNEW, the reaction I would get and yet when I was tired or hot or hungry or feeling provocative, I just didn’t care. Why on earth do I do stuff like this? It seems so ridiculous and mean.

Prime example: Debbie’s face wash is sitting on the bathroom counter in our apartment in Rome. It happens to be one of those exfoliating fash washes with the little scrubby beads. I see it. And it immediately pisses me off because every time I go home to visit my parents, this is the only face wash in the shower and I have to keep using it day after day while I’m there and I feel like I’m rubbing my SKIN OFF and I know for a fact, because I’m smarter than everyone, that you’re only supposed to exfoliate ONCE A WEEK and you know what? Now would be a GREAT FREAKING TIME to let Debbie know that she’s living her life INCORRECTLY.

Me: (in condescending tone) You don’t use that every day, do you?

My Higher Self: SHUT THE F*CK UP.

Deb: Um. Yeah.

Me: (even more snotty) Well. You’re only supposed to exfoliate once a day. You should find a more gentle cleanser.

My Higher Self: ARE YOU FOR REAL RIGHT NOW?

Deb: Uh. Well I like it. It makes my face feel clean. And shut up.

Me: WELL I’M JUST SAYING IT’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU.

My Higher Self: SHE’S RIGHT SHE’S RIGHT SHUT UP SHUT UP

Deb: Well it’s my face wash AND I LIKE IT.

Me: (calling out of the room) Tom, aren’t you only supposed to exfoliate once a week?

My Higher Self: GOING TO SOMEONE ELSE TO PROVE YOUR POINT!? ARE YOU SOME KIND OF MANIAC? STOP BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

But I couldn’t. You see? I just couldn’t. Because I had to tell her. I had to make sure my sister knew she was WRONG because she wasn’t like ME and after it happened, I went in my room and had to meditate because I was so ashamed of myself. I mean, ridiculously, horrendously ashamed of myself because SHUT UP ABOUT THE EXFOLIATING, SHE’S ALMOST 24 YEARS OLD, SHE CAN WASH HER FACE WITH DIRT IF IT MAKES HER HAPPY.

And here is something that is an interesting pattern from childhood – criticizing someone else, not because they exhibited harmful or dangerous behavior but simply because they aren’t like you. And that automatically makes them wrong.

Well, *I* would never use that face wash…

Differences should be celebrated in families (and elsewhere, obviously.) But I can see how it can be hard because wouldn’t it just be easier if we were all the same? Then we wouldn’t fight and we wouldn’t have conflicting opinions and we’d all use a gentle face wash and life would be easy.

But differences are what make life interesting and what make my sister a truly remarkable person. So much of what I love about her is that she is not like me in the slightest. It was so hurtful for me (and her I’m sure) to fall back on some learned behavior that everyone should be the same and that when you aren’t the same as me, this makes you less than me.

Talk about ouch.

Luckily for both of us, the face wash incidents were few and far between. It’s been hard for me to let them go, though. Really hard for me to accept that I still treat her like a baby sometimes. Like I know better. Like she’s doing it wrong.

My God, Debra. You are doing everything so right.

I mean, even in this picture. You were the one, out of four of us, who happened to choose the best gelato flavors in the whole gelateria. And we were all envious of you and your cone of perfection. ALL OF US. And you even let us have a bite. Or five.

Anyway. I’m clinging to the majority of the trip, the rest of the trip, where I wasn’t such a jerk about face wash. Where I tried to shut the hell up about how much I knew and what I’d already seen and how I could do it better. There were so many moments, for me, when I just stopped talking. Stopped trying. And I just enjoyed. And let her enjoy. And we laughed until we cried and we ate a lot of pasta and pizza and we tried to throw Deb into the river whenever possible because she’s small and it was easy.

My sister has been living at home while going to grad school so when my dad got sick, she was the default sibling for round-the-clock care when he was getting an antibiotic through his PICC line every eight hours. Deb and my mother would take turns and set the alarm clock and haul out of bed at all hours of the morning to give him his medicine. She sat with him when he cried, she called 911 when he yelled and she was dependable, cheerful, uncomplaining.

All the time.

I was so happy she pinched her pennies and came to Italy because my God, the girl needed a break.

And I needed to see her happy.

Jumping into the sea, slurping gelato off a cone, dancing and singing her face off at a crazy Italian wedding.

My little sister, in the literal sense – shorter, tinier, younger. But my big sister in a lot of ways, pushing me to be a better person, to be stronger, to appreciate the things that make us different. That I can sing my showtunes and you can cook a delicious dinner. That I can make you laugh and you can speak your mind.

We can love each other not in spite of being different but because we are.

And remember, try not to be mean to your sister.

I’ll try not to. My God, I’ll keep trying.

She’s the only one I’ve got.