Times are Changing

My sister and her nephew came on my side of town (the “city”) Wednesday for dinner and a visit with her older sister. Sitting at the restaurant table watching her hold a conversation with both me and her son while cutting his broccoli really blapped me in the face about how different things have become in the last decade.

“Yea I saw him in the shop, he looks really good now. Son, don’t blow in your straw. Looks like he’s been working out. Do you want me to salt your broccoli?”

She’s a mother. Okay so I’ve known this for the past 5 years, but she’s just now getting on her feet again after her divorce, getting her own place and really proving herself. I think before I still looked at her as a kid, or just my younger sister instead of a mother and provider because she still had my parents’ help.

When I say she came “in to town” think of it more as a little trek in from our small home town. You know, where everybody knows your name? (Is that Cheers? I can’t remember…) Where I live, they’ve really built the city up recently and the roads are different, more confusing and accident prone. She was close to tears trying to follow me around town to different shops she wanted to visit because people would cut her off, or she got in the wrong lane because that’s the way she remembered going when her and I would bar hop around town 7 years ago.

Wow. You know you’re old when you say you bar-hopped 7 years ago.

She’s safe in her little town. She’s starting to become like my parents. If she can’t get something she needs in a store on her side of town, then she really doesn’t need it. I remember a time when we’d take every chance we could get to venture off into the city. Now she avoids it like the plague.

There’s this one really vivid memory I have of my sister and I. Either my sister or I tell it when we’re hanging out and there’s alcohol involved. For me, I feel like if I don’t revisit that time, the memory will fade. (And then what will we laugh about?)

I was about 10 years old, she was 7, and we shared a room with twin beds. Most nights we were up past our bed time whispering to each other across the room. Isn’t it funny how as adults we jump at the chance to crawl under the covers for some sleep but as kids you did everything you could to avoid it? Anyway, my sister and I would take turns whispering curse words at each other, then laugh because it sounded so strange coming out of our mouths. “Damn! Shit! Bitch!” Other times we would bury our faces in our pillows and scream. I’m actually laughing right now thinking about it. Go home and stick your face in your pillow and scream. Its funny and it feels good. One of our parents would come shuffling down the hall to fuss at us.

“Which one of you girls did that? You are supposed to be asleep by now.” Of course we’d be pretending to sleep and roll over sleepy-eyed, looking all confused. “Huh? What was that Mom? I was sleeping and didn’t hear you…”

So anyway, this whole ramble was just about how different life is now. Sometimes its yucky – responsibility, careers, bills. But sometimes it’s neat seeing how far you or a sibling has come.

That’s it. Thanks for listening.