Baby Sister

I am the eldest of six siblings, plus hundreds of foster siblings who came in and out of our lives and enriched us immeasurably. Our well spread out stair-steps go: me, sister, brother, brother, brother, sister. My youngest sister was born when I was seventeen years old and she was always like my own baby, in a way. My mom made a rule that I was not to carry her around in public if it could be helped because people always assumed she was my baby, an assumption my mother did not much appreciate. I used to sing my baby sister to sleep with the same three songs every night and I always loved her the best. I went away to college when she was just about five months old, but I didn't go very far...close enough that I was home on weekends to baby sit and home a couple of weeknights a week to babysit once my folks got me a car so I could. Also, I lived at home during the summers and watched the kids full-time so my mom could work in exchange for college money - I was like the wife. My baby sister and I stayed very close. When I moved to Austin for a year to get my Master's Degree, my folks moved the family from our home in Dallas back to Corpus where I and my other sister had been born. I was pleased. I spent that year alternating weekends visiting Lone Star Pa in Denton and the fam in Corpus and when I finished graduate school, Lone Star Pa and I both moved to Corpus, marrying a few months later. I got pregnant right away and then...the fam moved back to Dallas. It was a little late for me to follow them again and I was devasted, needing to stay employed and take care of my unborn child but torn to bits by the thought of living so far away from my baby sister, who was six when they moved away. It never really got any easier.

My baby sister and I stayed close over the years by her spending many stretches of her winter, spring and summer breaks visiting me in Corpus. I plotted to have her eventually move back to go to college here and dreamed of that for years. When my sister hit her mid-teens, though, she got busy with her own social life and stopped wanting to visit so much. I missed her a ton and my dreams of her living here someday pretty much evaporated. When she recently decided to go to college here, it was like a dream come true. I am looking forward intensely to having her here in the fall.

When I graduated from college, my baby sister, then four, was made to wear a dress, something very not-her and which she protested loudly. I would not have cared one way or the other, but the parents bribed her into it by telling her we (mom and sisters) would wear boy clothes to her high school graduation if she did. Over the years, this evolved into wearing tuxes. Well, by the time the baby sister's graduation came along, everyone else was wiggling out of the tux promise. I could not afford to rent a real tux, but I cobbled together a reasonable facsimile from a ruffly white shirt, black pants, a scarf cumberbund, a black suit jacket of my stepdad's and one of my brother's bow ties. I intended to keep my promise. My sister was in a different place, though, and turned red when she saw me. She made me change into a blouse and skirt. Ah, well. I tried.

My sister is so grown up and beautiful now. She graduated with all kinds of honors in the top 5% of her class. She's an athlete and a hard-worker and cares about God and her family and friends. She's going to major in kinesiology. I'm so proud of her.