My sister and I are four years apart.
As younger siblings do, I idolized my big sister. I lived for her hand-me-downs, not caring that they were usually stained and out of fashion by the time they got to me. I wore one of her old crop tops until it disintegrated, and even then my parents had to throw it out in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t know.
I loved playing with my big sister. Our favourite game was “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Ashley was always Mary; I was always the lamb. The rules of this game were simple: Ashley chose a beautiful dress from the dress-up bin and carried a wicker basket; I crawled on my hands and knees with the dog’s leash attached to my shirt as she dragged me around the basement.
When I was six, I lost my first tooth while we were playing this game. While Mary was stopped at the market to fill her wicker basket with tennis balls, I wiggled and pulled until my tooth popped out. I held the tooth excitedly, blood dripping down my chin. I told my sister that my tooth had fallen out; she took the tooth from me, put it in her basket, and continued dragging me around.
When I was eight, my sister was 12 and she didn’t want to play with me anymore. She wasn’t interested in toys, or make-believe, or anything else I had to offer. I was devastated. My sister had been my best friend for eight years and now it felt like she didn’t want anything to do with me. All she wanted to do was sit in her room with the door closed or talk on the phone.
My parents suggested that I ask my sister why she didn’t want to play with me anymore. My sister said it was because she wasn’t a little kid anymore and she didn’t want to play little kid games – not even Mary Had a Little Lamb!
But, she told me, we could spend time together in a different way. She told me we could be grown-up friends, who talk about boys and listen to music together. This sounded like the most boring waste of time imaginable, but I desperately wanted to be just like my sister so I agreed. My sister told me that sometimes we could still play our make-believe games together, but now we could be friends instead of just sisters. I didn’t understand what that meant at all, because weren’t sisters just best friends that got to live together?
From that day on, we played Mary Had a Little Lamb less often. Ashley taught me how to play Crazy 8s and let me listen to 90s grunge in her room if I wasn’t too annoying. To this day, my sister is my best friend and the one I talk to about boys and new bands we like. Instead of Crazy 8s we play Cards Against Humanity online and sometimes, if I’m not too annoying, she’ll let me listen to her newest 90s grunge Spotify playlist.
Thirty Something 