Friday, September 30, 2022. My sister has been “mine” since the day she was born. I wrote about how I named her. She was going to be Rita no matter what. But I’ve also always been almost a second mother to her like a lot of big sisters are. I remember when we were very young - she was still a toddler and so I must have been around six years old - my mom had to have some kind of surgery. When she got home, Rita went running to her to jump in her lap, and Mom yelled “No!”, because she had to be careful of her stitches. Well that scared Rita so much, that she wouldn’t go to her for quite a while. I had to take care of everything for her - including taking her to the potty. She wouldn’t let anyone else help her. I was a child myself but I considered it my job to take care of her. Not that I was always so noble! Haha! She used to follow me everywhere. I couldn’t play with my friends without her tagging along and it used to make me crazy. I made it my mission to get her own friends for her. But still, so often it was just us, and it was good. One of our favorite memories of our childhood was when we went to Greece when we were seven and eleven. This was at the height of the Dr. Scholl’s sandals popularity and of course, we wore our Dr. Scholl’s everywhere. We were walking down the wide sidewalks in Sparta, and would yell “Haki baki ha!” (from the Flintstones, our favorite cartoon), and fling our sandals a good twenty feet in front of us then chase after them. For some reason, we thought it was hilarious!
As we grew into our teens, we used to have battles on my bed. She was always trying to kiss my cheeks. She loved my cheeks for some reason. So we’d get to wrestling with her trying to get to me and me trying to get away. One time I started sliding off the bed and was yelling for her to stop but she was relentless! I ended dropping to the floor headfirst! Again, we both ended up cracking up.
Then there were the great mosquito hunts. We both would get bit, but hers were always worse. She’d come in my room with a giant welt somewhere and we’d search till we found the little bugger. I don’t know how we did it, but we did.
It wasn’t always sisterly bliss. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we love each other so we always come back to being best friends. I’ll never forget the time we were ending a phone call - this was sometime in our twenties, I think - and she said she wanted us to start saying “I love you” before we said goodbye. We always did that with our parents but had never done it with each other. It really touched me because at that point in my mind she seemed so independent of me. We never ended another phone call without saying it.
We’ve been living a few hours apart for the past few years. It’s the first time in our lives that we couldn’t get together whenever we wanted. But she’s still always there for me - just a phone call away. Many times I’ve called when this illness was getting the better of me and she would cry with me and talk to me till I got my grip again.
There are so many more memories. I could write pages and pages. God knew I needed a sister, and He knew she would need me. I found God in my baby sister before she was even born, and He’s been there in the love we’ve had for each other every day since.
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