Hey Sister

N   I have written extensively about my own history but I haven't really commented on the history I have shared with others. I have a large extended family on both my maternal and paternal side and a small immediate family. I come from your standard mum, dad and two kids affair. I'm older than my sister by two years and she's called Our Lucy, but is often known as Luce.

 

   We all came out in celebration of Lucy a few months ago when she got wed to her now husband Jake and finally flew the nest lovingly crafted and maintained by our parents Ange and Gegsy. I don't have any other intimate examples of what it means to have a sibling other than the one set for me by Lucy and I think she's set a high standard of love and care over the 26 years we've been together, often separated by land and sea but always, always a pair. To me having a sister is all about the easy friendship you simply can't duplicate with anyone else other than a very, very close friend or cousin. Lucy and I are the only sisters in a family where everyone else has a brother and I've seen that the brother/sister relationships of my cousins are also strong and precious. I think a very large part of the reason for this closeness between siblings is because we come from a family of which all of our parents are one of seven - meaning that family is important and it has a stronghold within our identities, we were taught to look after each other and on occasion I've felt just as protected by my cousins as I have always felt by Lucy. I remember when a not so comradey comrade gave me a hard time on an idle Tuesday at high school and one of my female cousins, also in the same school and older than me by a year, took much umbridge at this treatment of me and proceeded to put the not so comradey comrade into a position of interrogation and saw to it that the uncomradey one didn't pull a stroke like that again. The cousin in question continues to be a close friend to this day and someone I've put into something resembling a 'big sister' column in my mind.

 

   I don't wish to represent my sister Lucy as being a little saint. A little saint she is not and our dad took great delight in revealing her past misdemeanours in the speech he gave with excellent delivery and aplomb at her wedding. It was of course all said in jest but everything that escaped his vocal box was the truth. We know so much about our sisters; we know why they're a little bit defensive, we know when they started paying a lot of attention to their hair and makeup. We know when they took off from us emotionally to 'find themselves' and we remember when they came back with a greater impression in their mind's eye of who they had become. A sister who is close in age is likely to have been our first friend, competition for parental attention, a yard stick to measure ourselves against and in my case someone who is always, always there, ready to take me in, dust off the day and say something which is unique to her, highly likely to make me laugh and cause me to feel grateful for the 30th April 1989, which is the day three became four and Little Luce began to make her first impressions on the world.

 I have a great deal of respect for and interest in the sanctity of sisterhood. My sister used to be a mucky little thing in the garden who was forever consuming mud pies and leaves, she still knows where they tastiest leaves are… she used to have tasting sessions during her morning constitution as she headed towards school and then inevitably diverted her route and went somewhere else instead. Lucy isn't a mucky little thing or truant anymore, she's just little now and I'm so glad that I've seen and been part of her journey from mummy and daddy's tiny baby to toddler, to my friend, to school, to high school, to A LOT of college courses, (one of which resulted in expulsion) and now to marriage. I'm expecting her with our mum and dad in three and a half weeks time for a week long visit… at the end of which we'll put on our red shoes, click three times and go back to our little town just outside of Liverpool city centre. As Dorothy always says, there's no place like home and it's all the better when you've got a full memory bank waiting to be woken up when you get back. You can stroll along the beach there with your sister who always walks a pace ahead and talks nineteen to the dozen but continually looks back to check you're still there as she mosies with her back straight, senses tuned in and serves to dazzle the world around.