Sisters.. Getting through the tough stuff. Sharing. Sharing everything.
For better or for worse, through sickness and in health – much more than marriage, sisterhood is forever.
Sharing is caring. And sometimes it isn’t. As the eldest, I never got to keep all of what I had. Why, if I found more of the chocolate eggs in the hunt, did I not get to keep them? Sharing. As the youngest, my sister never got new clothes. She got clothes that were new to her.
This time she was the one to share new things.
Nothing is really clear at 1 am, crossing paths once again, one destined for a brief attempt at achy-jointed sleep, the other destined to take her place in worship at the porcelain god. Timing is key, that much is clear.
My youngest sister and I know each other well. I’ve known her for her entire life, in fact. When we accidentally say something at the same time, it sounds like the creepy girl-child twins from any one of a number of horror movies. We verbalize the same thought simultaneously, often. Thankfully that synchronicity doesn’t extend this far – we were, in fact, well-matched in an alternating schedule. Lucky, considering there are three sisters in this hotel room, and only one idol at which to pay our respects.
Having grown up together probably helped us master this dreadful merry-go-round. A small blessing in a night of unanswered prayers for a stop.
There’s some comfort to be found, knowing that someone is sympathizing as a prod from the stomach region army-rolls one from one’s bed to one’s knees. And when, 20 minutes later, your action is mirrored, the sympathy is returned. Someone to share in that feeling of having done 1000 sit-ups.
Sisterhood isn’t always about getting along – for instance, at 3 am, a not-so-sound sleeper, the only one to escape the plague, might object strongly to the lights being turned on, no matter how many groans of pain and misery she’d turned a deaf ear on. She wasn’t sympathetic to the demand that she find something, anything, to MAKE. IT. STOP. It? All of it. Whatever it takes.
Sometime around 6, truth be told, two hazy, hollowed-out individuals might have felt some sense of satisfaction as a certain grumpy camper paid homage herself. It isn’t always about kindness, either.
At the end of the night, less sharing would have been nice. Timing is everything. And when your mother’s insistent knock at the locked door makes you mis-time your stagger towards the door, making the door an impossible distance away, your sisters have your back. And when, in response to your piteous wail, your mother asks, “What do you mean, you stepped in your bucket ?”, your sister will be there to answer the door and say, “Give me a minute, she’s having a bad day!”
