Three Sisters

There is probably no bond more difficult, emotional or enduring as the bond between sisters. 

 

My older sister was a bookworm, a pretty quiet kid with freckles on the bridge of her nose who wore coke-bottle glasses and curly short hair.  I was the chubby middle kid who looked a lot like my dad and had his mercurial disposition.  Our younger sister had big blue eyes and white blond hair -- she was the sickly one, it seemed, and if that wasn’t entirely true, her fragility was. 

Sisters tease each other when they’re young and when they fight, they do it mean and dirty.  My older sister and I would hit, scratch and snitch on each other.  When we wanted to get at our little sister we acted as if she wasn’t in the room -- “There’s a breeze in here,” we would say menacingly -- proclaiming her nothingness to us in that cruel way kids do so well.  And my little sister would stomp, shout at us to stop it, than run off wailing to Mom.

But here’s the thing: We’re well into middle age now – in fact, my older sister is almost half-way through her sixties – yet still some of those childhood behaviors and quirks occasionally reappear.

My older sister arrived with her husband this weekend from her home in Austria for a nearly 4-week visit in the States.  She’s spending two weekends at my home, where my younger sister will decamp for dinners while she’s in residence, and then go off to spend the bulk of her time with my elderly parents. 

When we 3 sisters come together, we whirl through emotions and events quickly and with the occasional violence of a tornado.  I tell my older sister things she should know and believe; my younger sister weighs in with her opinion; and then the eldest of us asserts her seniority by rendering her definitive point of view in a large voice, if you know what I mean.  In fact, that’s the trigger for the 3 of us to talk really, really loud in an effort to assert our moral and sibling authority. And that's when the husbands leave the room in search of shelter. 

You can count on what comes next:  We disagree about something.   All of us say something mean (not always unintentionally).  But even as our personal thunderclouds hover like thought bubbles over our heads, our fierce affection for each other gets us on the other side of the storm.

And when our visit is over, we kind of need that break from each other – a short one.  Until we see each other again and again begin our curious little dance.

Yup, sisterhood is a strange and wonderful thing.