I have only one sister.  One sibling.  She’s three years younger than I am, and I can still remember waiting on the cement steps outside my front door on that July afternoon, watching for my parents to pull into our driveway with my new sister, Melanie.  I was only three, and I think its likely one of my earliest memories.

But after having a baby sister for a couple days, I decided it wasn’t really for me.  She cried.  All. The. Time. And my mom seemed to only care about her.  All that love and attention I was used to getting as an only child had been sucked away by this tiny interloper and apparently, I told my mom to “take her back.” 

Of course, that’s not how things worked and as we settled into a bit more of a routine, we became closer.  We hardly fought as kids.  When she was little, she wanted to be like me and she was a willing participant in all the silly games I directed.  As we got older, she decided she didn’t want to preserve quite the same “good girl” image that I was known for.  I cared far too much about pleasing others, mostly my parents and teachers, and Melanie was much stronger.  When I was a sophomore, my friends and I would play “drinking games” in the basement using the array of strange, artificially flavoured Diet Rite sodas as the “penalty” instead of liquor or beer.  At that same age, Melanie, along with a few friends, managed to polish off a bottle of tequila in the basement, while my dad was upstairs.  She ended up in the hospital, getting her stomach pumped and an IV of fluids.

When I went away to university, I joined the UW Marching Band for my first semester.  This gave me a free trip out to the Rose Bowl game when the Badgers made it to the championship.  A big part of why I ended up at UW Madison, playing in the marching band was because of my parents, who were both alumni and huge fans.  They traveled to California to watch me (and the team) play at Venice Beach and march in the Rose Parade.  They were at the game as we entertained the crowd and wrapped things up with the famous “5^th quarter” following a Badger win.  I flew back with the band right after the game, and we ended up being the last flight that landed before a massive winter storm shut everything down.  My parents’ flight was cancelled, and they ended up getting stuck in California for another several days.

Mel had been staying with my grandparents, and when I landed back in Madison, I ended up at their house too.  But we were ready to get back to our own house and friends and determined to make it happen.  Despite the weather, my uncle Randy loaded his truck with sandbags to increase the weight and drove us the 2 hours home.  The next couple days, Mel and I had a sense of freedom we hadn’t experienced often.  My parents were stuck navigating the fallout of the storm and trying to get a new flight back and we had the house to ourselves.  At some point, Mel decided she wanted to go to a party with some of her friends.  The roads were still snowy and slippery and my protective sister instincts kicked in.  I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to her on my watch.  So, I offered to cook her anything she wanted for dinner if she just stayed home with me.  She smiled and said she wanted me to make her fettuccine Alfredo.  She thought she’d stumped me, but I was resourceful.  I found my mom’s classic Betty Crocker cookbook with the orange cover and looked it up.  As it turns out, making Alfredo is not all that difficult.  I nailed the assignment, and we enjoyed our “fancy” dinner, and I kept her safe until my parents returned. 

The summer after my 2^nd year at university, Mel came to visit me and stay in my apartment.  We had 6 of us crammed in the 4^th floor “penthouse” apartment next to a convenience store.  During the day, I had summer school and work, so she mostly hung out and smoked cigarettes with my neighbours.  By that time, I’d let go of some of my “good girl” facade and I, too, was a smoker.  But I remember that I would never agree to buy Melanie cigarettes.  I’d tell her she could ask my roommate or one of the neighbour boys, but something about being the older sister and buying them for her was a step too far.  One day when I came back from my summer job, she wasn’t in the apartment.  These were the days before cell phones and I truly had no idea where she could be.  Before long, she walked back in, followed by my neighbour, Steve, each of them carrying a helmet.  Apparently, Steve had just gotten a used motorcycle and she had been riding with him all over the city.  I thanked any higher power who would listen that she was back safe, knowing I would have been in serious trouble if something had happened to her while I was “in charge.”

We both survived our teen and early adult years.  I think being an older sister helped prepare me for being a mom, as those instincts to keep someone safe and protect them were familiar to me.