for me, you are the one

I currently have 2,599 pictures saved on my computer, and I know this because I had to scroll back a very long ways to find a photo of my sister. The last time I saw her was at her wedding; the last moment, when she turned back to wave before driving off with her husband for their honeymoon in upstate New York. She got married on Saturday, my Grandpa's 80th birthday party was on Sunday, I flew to New Orleans on Monday, got engaged on Wednesday, flew home on Thursday (also my mom's birthday), packed for a whole new life on Friday, and flew to Mozambique on Saturday. That was a very full week.

In the time since, I've gone swimming in the Indian Ocean (many times), learned to drive on the left-hand side of the road, attended my first Mozambican funeral, got de-engaged, discovered a gecko sitting on my toothbrush, learned the Shona word for diarrhea, began raising chickens, and drank a gin & tonic on an empty stomach much too fast one sweltering day in Swaziland. It's been a full 19 months.

My dear sister wasn't there for any of those events, not literally, but still she was, in a way. Not because she calls me very faithfully; or because she once sent a care package that cost $119 to mail; but, rather, because I love her deeply. She's part of me.

An essential quality about my relationship with my sister is that I am selfish and she is not. I am a better cribbage player and know more about the Lord of the Rings than she does, but beyond those details, she is a much better person than me in almost every way.

I sometimes think I behave badly to her because I can. Our love is secure. This is one of the eternal contradictions of family. I often fly willy-nilly by my emotions with her, leaping into my forever role as younger sister. I regress.

She takes it all in stride though, par for the course. She loves me.

“For our first meal, they sat together on one side of the rough table, Frannie and I sat together on the other, and Uncle sat at the end of the table facing a small window. From my bench, it was easy to watch the two sisters, and I rather regretted I did not myself have a sister who was a friend and with whom I could compare myself, the better to understand both my singularity and our commonality.” 

(Ahab’s Wife, Sena Jeter Naslund)

Right now I am sitting on Sara's bed in our semi-darkened room, laptop on lap, and I am thinking back to the old days: Ginger catching crickets in boxes, caring for disheveled farm kittens on our grandparent's patch of scruffy farmland in central Oklahoma. I was the littler one in red overall shorts, more timid back then, watching closely, learning from her. I obeyed when she said Go, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker when she told me that water towers have an office, right in the center of the tank, where caretakers keep their desks with telephones and files - and yes, even fell for that oldest sibling trick: "Let's see how fast you can clean my room!" She was a sneaky one, and not that well-behaved back then.


She outgrew her rougher tendencies of childhood (once thumping a neighbor boy in the head with a hammer, yikes), and blossomed into someone more peaceful in her being, a woman who knows her path. To understand my sister now, you have to get to know her heart, which is where she most acts from, with great generosity. (A terrible thought is that I live, by comparison, mostly in my head, a darker counterpoint to her goodness.) Sometimes I treat her like a child because of what seems like naivete about how the world works. But I don't think it is. She trusts there is enough love to go around. 

Because her husband is from China, and that is where she lived for four years right up until their marriage; and because I've spent about a week total in his presence; my brother-in-law remains a disquieting mystery. If the two really do become one, as the Bible says metaphorically, my sister has now morphed into some new being. Still Ginger, but also GinPeter. This is a sticking point for me. I'm having trouble adjusting to the idea.

- Psychotherapist: Aha. You have to share her now. You sound jealous.
- Me: Well, that's because I AM! 

1992

This is what she is like:

My sister is a genius at making up games, especially when we were kids. She has always taken the role of mediator or peacemaker in our immediate family, gently translating ourselves to each other. She's more calm and tactful but also bubbles over with silliness, infectious until it becomes annoying, and even then it is pretty endearing. She set herself down to the task and - a million hours of study later - actually learned to read, write, and speak Mandarin. Once while furiously riding her bike for a charity fundraiser, some sort of college triathlon relay, she accidentally ran over a poodle who ran in front of her on the road, and she yelled back over her shoulder: "I'M SORRY LITTLE DOGGY!"

She loves Dairy Queen ice cream cakes, the quirky Australian movie Strictly Ballroom, and K-pop bands. She has a huge smile. She is so earnest contemplating faith, a spiritual Sarah - Abraham's wife - as she must have been after first smirking and then, in wonderment, giving birth. That would change a person forever.

Once she saved an immigrant family from a burning house - no really. The father had been stripping their wood floors with gasoline, the daughter flipped a light switch, and the whole house house ignited in a flash, burning them both from head to toe. Ginger (who is an RN) ran inside, called the paramedics, cut their clothes off, and helped them into the ambulance when it arrived. 

Her birthday is on Tuesday. She will be 31. I want her to see this now and know how much I think about her, need her, am sorry, and can't wait for us to be together again. She is a fabulous friend, my sister: the funniest, truest, most loyal there is.

This really expresses so much about our early life together.

Happy birthday, Ging. I love you.