This is a long overdue blog. I started writing it in July before Lael’s wedding but only now am I returning to finish it…so here is my toast to my big sister during her first year of life with Andy.
At first I titled this post “The Big Sister,” but I thought that an article before big would make it sound like the physical size of my older sister, rather than a mark of our birth order. Lael is infact THE big sister. She is the eldest sister who has served as my mother’s second-in-command, driving us to and from various activities, making dinner, cheering us on, helping with homework, laughing with us in times of joy and comforting us when we were down. And last August Lael was married to Andy Park. It is still weird for me to think about. It is no longer Lael, but always Lael and Andy. And I have come to expect that anything I tell my sister will be told to her husband—which is fine, but it just takes some getting used to. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do love Andy, but for 26 years it was Lael, single, unattached Lael. Sure she had her line up of boyfriends, but this is marriage! It’s a till-death-do-us-part coupling, so I expect Andy to be around longer than the toads she had to kiss to finally find Andy. So, it might just take me another 26 years to get used to the Lael-Andy duo.
It seems like it was just yesterday we were in Colleville, Texas playing house. And I have no doubt that Lael has every capability to run all the little details that go into making a real, adult-life, loving, organized home because let me tell you, she certainly used to put me in my place for pretend house–or really any type of make-believe play. Lael ordered what role I was supposed to play. And I complied for the most part, always adding my own imaginary spin to whatever we were playing. She always assigned me the male parts whether it was making a music video, putting on a play or playing house. I remember once we were in a community play and we didn’t have enough males to play all the roles, so Lael thought I should volunteer to play the husband part in the play who’s wife was played by my brother’s girlfriend at the time. A little bit twisted, but I had so much practice playing the lead male roles that the part came very natural. Thanks, sis!
Lael is the first sibling to be married. Just as I cannot believe Jaclyn is almost through her first year of college, or Macie is graduating undergrad or I am graduating with my Masters, I cannot believe we are old enough to be married, but there Lael is in Texas–married, house, two dogs, a cat and a husband. Some days I expect to wake up in our bedroom on Oak Knoll Court where my three sisters and I shared one big bedroom. Lael on the top bunk, Macie and Jaclyn sharing the trundle and me stuck in the middle per usual. But then I wake up to my own room in Boston, knowing Lael is tucked in bed next to her husband in Fort Worth; Macie is sleeping in Columbia, and Jaclyn is in her dorm room in Rock Hill. We live and sleep worlds away from one another now, growing up into young women who in many ways only remain connected by blood and old memories of years far far away. It has been seven years since I have lived in the same place as my sisters, yet when we all get together we easily slip into our childhood selves, forgetting that we are 27, 25, 22 and 18 and enjoying time laughing, reminiscing and hugging. Sometimes there is fighting, crying and silence as we reintegrate ourselves into one another’s lives, but the deep love that binds us as sisters always overcomes the differences that might make all of us seem like an unlikely group of friends.
We are friends just as much as we are sisters, and we do love one another very deeply and this sisterly intimacy can be overwhelming to outsiders. Actually I think our family can be overwhelming. It would not be fair to leave out daddy, mommy and our brother because we are a close family—not a perfect family because we are dysfunctional in many, many ways, but beneath our individual and family flaws is a deeply rooted, intimate love for each other that always leads us to forgiveness, understanding and acceptance of the adults we have become.
When we were kids and imagined future spouses we always nicely played like they perfectly fit into the family. That may be easier played than lived. Perhaps that is harsh honesty that should not be voiced, but I believe it to be true and somewhat relieving to speak the elephant that sometimes enters the room. Everything in the world changes and evolves, and we grow into adults, meeting people we want to start our own families with, and still when we all get together it’s easy to go back to the old days when all we had as we moved from place to place was each other–daddy, mommy, brother and sisters. For years it was just the seven of us who loved and knew each other better than we sometimes knew ourselves. That life is still a part of our present selves, and it makes for kind of an uncomfortable, gradual transition as we ourselves change and welcome new members into our close-nit family.
My original title “The Big Sister” was simply to be a tribute to my eldest sister, Lael, on her wedding day, but as I write I have realized that I cannot write about her without writing about our family, without writing about her relationship to me, my sisters, my brother or my parents. Perhaps in a way this is my way of mourning the childhood we shared together as we all move towards major life transitions into adulthood; writing this is a bridge to help me move on and accept the inevitability of adulthood that seems so real and unavoidable as I watched my big sister say “I do” to our new brother-in-law, Andy. Lael’s wedding was the first event of a big year for our family. Since that day on August 2nd Jaclyn started her freshman year of college, Macie graduated undergrad and I graduated with my Masters. An important year of major changes in our individual lives, but changes we feel as a family. It seems appropriate that Lael would usher in this meaningful year of changes. She is the big sister and as I and my two other sisters have done since our births we follow her into the newness of life that awaits us, a future unknown but full of expectations, promises and perhaps even disappointments and heartbreak. I may look back in a nostalgia for our childhood days where we played and imagined without a single care or worry, but there is a lot to look forward to in our unknown futures, and Lael has shown this to us as she begins her new life with Andy.
