When my older sister moved away to college, my mom and I were worried we might kill each other.
Seriously.
Since before I can remember, I always got the feeling that my older sister was my mom’s favorite. That’s not to say she mistreated me, or even made it completely obvious, but after hearing “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” a few thousand times, a kid begins to wonder.
My older sister had always acted as a kind of involuntary buffer system between my mom and me. So, as I stood waving, watching my sister drive off into the distant sunset, I feared what the next two years would be like, just my mom and me. I envisioned a lot of yelling and crying and cursing. I assumed the worst.
But, as the old saying goes, "assuming only makes an ass of you and me," or something like that.
We actually got along famously. We went to movies together, we went to dinner together, we went to parties together (thrown by her friends, not mine). But it wasn't mom overload, either. We were both busy during the day, and neither of us went out at night, so that was when we bonded. I told her about boys I liked and girls I hated, and she told me about work and whatever drama there was between her friends. She treated me like an adult, and I treated her like a best friend.
Nowadays, we're closer than ever. We talk almost every day, either on the phone or on Skype. We still fight and disagree about a lot of stuff, but we have a very honest relationship that I wouldn’t give up for the world. I can’t imagine it any other way.
Read Chris’ story about his relationship with his father, and the turning point at which he was finally able to accept his father for who he was.
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