Thoughts about my sister (part 1)

One of the greatest gifts in life, I’m convinced, is the ability to see old things in new ways. I don’t really know where the new perspective comes from, but occasionally, it’s just there and it makes me feel refreshed and vibrant and alive. It never fails to bring a smile to my face or relieve the tension in my chest. And the greatest part is that the dawn of the new perspective always strikes at the least expected moment in time.

For instance, finding myself in Ohio, the state where I grew up and swore I’d never return, I can’t help but see things completely differently. I never intend to; I just get up and go about my day as I normally would anywhere. But little moments continually stop me in my tracks – sometimes for only a split second – and make me appreciate life, and Ohio, all over again. Today, I got up, made coffee, boiled some water to wash my face (the hot water heater is broken) and started to look at the list of things I need to do today. I was just beginning to try to place them in some semblance of a timeline around the contractor’s schedule when I looked out the patio doors and saw two robins hopping about the backyard. And I stopped. A smile crossed my face and I felt countenance perk up. I don’t remember the last time I watched robins dance in the grass on an early spring morning, but it’s clearly been too long. The sight of it is just one of those little moments that makes you feel alive again. It’s like your heart knows that you miss something your mind doesn’t even realize is gone.

I’ve had several split-second perspective changes in the months since I’ve been back in Ohio. The sight of rushing water in a river that really is a river, not a glorified creek. The strength of leafless trees as they stand against the winter, waiting for spring to awaken them from their winter respite. The smell of fire in the air, not because a national forest is burning but because a family has decided to make s’mores over the flames in their fireplace. The sound of geese honking as they fly overhead, returning from their winter homes to the lakes and ponds of the Ohio River Valley where I imagine they prefer to spend their time. The beauty of old farmhouses, whose owners in better days laid claim to even the land my parents own. The fun of explaining to people who aren’t from around here why everything is named Something Lick – Stonelick, East Lick, Mays Lick.

But there is one particular realization that I cherish more than the others.

I have a twin sister. Being a twin is the only perspective I have ever known. I do not know how to answer the question, “what’s it like to have a twin?” because I do not know what it is like not to have a twin. For most of my life she has been one of the people in my inner circle of friends, if not my best friend. She shared crushes on the same boys in elementary school, endured suspicion together from the same girls in high school who didn’t trust us because we were better friends with their boyfriends than with them, and coached each other through career-ending athletic injuries as we rediscovered that there was life outside of soccer. Perhaps it is because we have always been so close that I took her for granted.

In a lot of ways (although I have never been married), I imagine my sentiments toward my sister as similar to those that people who have been married for years often admit to having. They do not feel their spouse values them or notices all that they do for them. In ways, it is because they have become too comfortable around one another, to accustomed to the life they share. Sometimes, one or the other of them will have one of those small revelations about the other. They will be sitting on the couch, hugging their kid, when their spouse walks into view in the middle of the doorframe and the way the light is shining on them or the hitherto-unnoticed sparkle in their eye causes the couch-sitter to stop, for the tiniest of split seconds, and realize how in love they still are with their spouse. I know for me, some of the greatest moments I’ve spent with my married friends are the ones where we’ll be talking and suddenly their eyes will catch the vision of their spouse and their gaze lingers ever-so-slightly longer than it normally would. Then they will smile and say how hot their wife is, or how great it is when their husband calls them “woman”, or how every child should have a dad as like him. I think it’s in those moments that love really exists.

I had one of those awakening moments with my sister the other day. I was sitting on her couch on a cold Saturday afternoon, surfing the internet on my laptop computer. She was cleaning her bathroom and kept coming into the living room to share anecdotes from her week. She has this way of simultaneously pushing her head forward, forcing her lower jaw in front of her upper, rolling her eyes and slapping her right thigh with the outside of her right hand when she’s telling a story in which the main character (her) gets exasperated by the idiocy of another individual. She was executing this series of actions when I realized how much I love her and how many admirable attributes she has that I’d never noticed before. It sounds weird to say it, but it’s almost that I saw her for the first time as a grown-up, a complete person, whose life and being were making an impact on mine.