Happy Sisters Day! How My Sister Became My BFF
She’s your first female friend, your original bestie, the person who taught you what it means to care for—and be cared for—by someone who wasn’t your parent. And no matter how different you are, you’re in this thing together—for life. That’s the power of sisterhood. We think the relationship between sisters is something so unique it deserves its own holiday. That’s why on the first Sunday of August we celebrate Sisters Day. It’s an opportunity to show someone who’s so close to your heart just how much she means to you. Here’s one story of sisterhood from Hello Giggles’ own Kit Steinkellner. Share your own stories of sisterhood in the comments section!
I was born almost eight years before my sister. What this means is that when I started high school, she was six years old. And when I went to college, she was in the fifth grade. I always loved my sister (like to the MOON and BACK loved her), but for much of our lives, we just didn’t have much in common. To quote one of my all time favorite movies, “Ever After”: “A fish may love a bird, but where would they live?” My sister and I were basically a fish and a bird that were related to one another. She was a pipsqueak of an elementary school fish and I was a super self-absorbed and insecure high school bird. We didn’t hang out for hours and hours to talk. We didn’t have hours and hours of things to talk about.
My brother, three years younger than me, five years older than my sister, split the age difference between us, and as a result, was much closer to my sister and I than we were to each other. I hated this equation. I wanted to be close to my sister too. I just couldn’t figure out the math. We didn’t have that much to talk about, do together, bond over. I was so jealous of girls I knew with sisters closer in age. They swapped clothes! They snarked about their family! They watched television intended for mature audiences! All the things I absolutely could not do with my sister without a.) getting my elbows and neck stuck in a shirt intended for a nine-year old b.) having my still-at-a-tattletaling-age sister run to my mom and spill every single word I had said behind my mom’s back c.) intro-ing her to “Sex and the City” a full decade before she was age-appropriate for cable content and then having to beg and bribe my sister not to tell the rest of her fourth grade class what a rabbit vibrator was. My mom told me that my sister would grow and the gap would close but it was near impossible to believe that our relationship would ever really change. Secretly, I thought that I would always be eight years too old to really connect with my sister, and she would be eight years too young to really connect with me.
The thing about my mom is she really is right most of the time (she thinks she’s right a HUNDRED percent of the time, but the actual number’s more like eighty-seven). Once my sister hit high school (I was just finishing up college at this point) a whole world opened up for us. We started sharing clothes, talking about boys, watching the same tv shows, all that bond-y goodness my mom promised. What really kicked our relationship into high gear was when we decided to do a web comic together (I wrote the script, she illustrated the strips). We had so much fun creating and collaborating, consistently working on a project together gave our relationship a rock-solid foundation and sent the momentum of our sisterhood into warp speed. Until I got close with my sister, I had no idea that familial relationships (or really any kind of relationship) could change as dramatically as our relationship has changed. I don’t look at any relationship in my life anymore as a set-in-stone dynamic. Every relationship in my life I not only now allow but now expect to surprise me. Time is a powerful force and it has the power to change things for the better, a fact for which I am grateful times infinity plus one.
