I have a very complicated family history. My grandfather has 15 siblings. That leads to a lot of confusion down the family tree. I stopped asking how each person was related to me a long time ago, and stopped explaining to other people how I am related to the people in my family.
It is common for couples to have children relatively close in age so that their child has someone to play with. However, my parents decided to only have just one kid, me.
After me, my parents divorced some time later, but then they both didn’t find the right people to introduce into my life. However, my dad fell deeply in love with a woman when I was eight years old and had a child with her 10 years after I was born. I was super excited to have a sibling; I was going to be a big sister! But, I didn’t realize how much time ten years really was.
Sophia is my half sister, which means that we share half of the same DNA (a concept she still cannot grasp). Every weekend I was driven down to Olympia to visit my dad, and every morning I was woken up by an adorable devil that made camp in my room. At six a.m. Sophia would wake up and rattle the bars of the cage until I rolled my dead body out of bed. I changed her, fed her, and then would take her to the living room to play until the adults woke up hours later. I became the conveniently free, stay at home nanny.
Now don’t get me wrong I did love her, but there were times I resented her. Her cries always came first, and she was constantly soaking up all the attention in the room. At the time I didn’t understand this. Before Sophia I was the baby of the family and had never grown up with another small human in the house; I was the one always in the limelight. Of course, after becoming older I started to understand that I am less dependent on adults than small children are, and that they need more attention because they cannot yet cook or wipe their own asses like I can.
Sophia wanted to be like me when she was younger, and in a lot of ways she was. Our baby photos make us look like twins, we both sing out our day-to-day activities (like we plucked right out of a Disney movie), and we both like very bland clothing. She wanted to play soccer like I had done since I was five years old. So the moment she turned five, she was signed up and played one season before she decided she didn’t like sports. She thought she would be good at soccer because she can “run as fast as a cheetah”, but after adding the dribbling of the ball, her coordination got the best of her.
Finding ways to connect with Sophia was hard. No, I didn’t want to watch My Little Pony when I was 15, and Barbies were so four years ago, I could finally do my own makeup and there were cute boys at high school football games. Our interests were separated by 10 years. Yes, I did like My Little Pony at one point, but I couldn’t tell you any of the horses’ names now. One thing we could connect on was games. I love board games or games on my phone; I cloud play them for hours. Sophia and I loved to play Candy Crush and Temple Run while waiting for our food during dinner, and we would take turns if we lost a level or died. I mostly like playing board games with her because I always win and it’s a real confidence boost.
It wasn’t until this year I really started to notice how much Sophia grew up because she’s always been my baby sister in my eyes. She can form her own opinions, share coherent thoughts, and I don’t have to worry about her drowning in the tub anymore. I think people have actually stopped thinking I’m her teenage mother now too. She is inspired by art and ballet and aspires to follow her passion of being a ballerina and performing in shows like the Nutcracker. Sophia is nine years old, and every time I see her she says, “When I’m your age, you’ll be 29! You’re growing up on me so fast”, but really she’s the one growing up on me so fast. She is inspiring for being so young; the way her imagination runs baffles me. Everything to her is an abstract idea, not a simple solution.
The kid still knows just the right buttons to push to leave me with the thought of grabbing her by the ankles and giving her a nice love tap against the wall, but I still would ask for no other way for a sibling to come into my life, or for a better sibling than her.
