We Are Family, or, The Ya-Ya Sisterhood of the (non-travelling) Pants

Milli (aka siskers)  has challenged me to blog about my sister, because I don't really talk about her much. There's a reason for that. I don't friends-lock any of my entries, so anything I post about my sister here is likely to find its way back to her eventually. Not that she reads this. She's not the interwebby type. She doesn't "get" the whole blog thing. But my nieces do occasionally pop in to read (and by the way, I know you're all busy what with the college thing and all, no_hdaisy  but that's no excuse for not posting more) so I have to self-edit a lot. Which is why I also don't post much about my husband. Seriously, the man is a veritable gold mine of blogging material, but I'm not about to go down that path.

Anyway, about my sister...milli wants to know if she's much like me. The answer is yes, and no. She's hyper-focused; I'm a scatterbrain. She's a planner; I rely on serendipity. She believes in discretion; I blurt out whatever pops into my head. She's ambitious; I have no desire for advancement.

We don't look alike. Until you know we're sisters. People can know both of us for years and not have a clue we're related. But I can't count the number of times I've heard - after someone found out -  "I should have guessed - it's so obvious. You look exactly alike".  Yes, except for the fact that one of us is a green-eyed olive-skinned blonde and the the other is a brown-eyed fish-belly pale redhead. But we share mannerisms, and speech patterns, and a certain...intensity...when we're making a point.

People who don't know my sister well think she's very scary. I find that funny, because she's without a doubt the kindest, most loyal, most generous person I have ever known.  She always, always does the right thing, simply because it's the right thing to do. I guess the scary part is that she expects everyone else to do the right thing as well, and makes no bones about letting that expectation be known.

She's not without her quirks, of course. She's notoriously cheap. She once spent ten minutes lecturing me for paying the extra $5 to get the foam pad when I had my mammogram. Then again, she's the one who retired at age 50, so I guess she was on to something. Since she was a little girl, she's had this thing where she believes that if she thinks something, she's said it out loud, and it's everyone else's fault if we didn't hear her. She's also absolutely convinced that if she doesn't remember something, it never happened, no matter how many other people do remember it.

Milli asked for a story from when we were growing up together. Oddly enough, I really don't have any. We didn't really play together as children; our interests were too different. She was aligned with the big kids in the neighborhood, while I was one of the little kids. There are plenty of family stories about my sister, but none of them involve me.  At least, none that would be the same in my telling as it would be in hers.