My sister Jess got married a few weeks ago. For months leading up to the wedding, I did the best I could to help our other sister, Vanessa, prepare to not cry during her maid of honor speech. I got a little teary sometimes when I read or heard the speech, but not to the extent Vanessa did. Then the day of the wedding came, and all of my sisters were weepy. I just didn’t get it.
“I guess in my mind she just became an entirely different person from the little kid I remember,” I told them. It didn’t feel like my baby sister was getting married. That person had sort of stopped existing years ago. Jess, today, is Adult Jess, a person who rarely asks for or requires my advice about anything.
My parents had four girls in total; when my father remarried, he and my step-mom had two more daughters. I wrote about this here, but today I want to write about being the oldest to that first group of four, and in particular, the baby, Jess.
My father is convinced that the main reason I don’t want to have children is because I was given too much responsibility as the oldest child. He feels guilty for allowing me to change diapers and babysit and prepare meals. I don’t want him to feel badly, so I instinctively tell him it’s not true. But is it?
No. It’s not true. There are plenty of oldest siblings who go on to have big families precisely because they enjoyed caring for their brothers and sisters and living in the chaos of a big family; I am not one of them and never have been. I didn’t enjoy taking care of anyone as a kid — I did it because I believed it to be my responsibility, and I follow rules. But I never played house. Instead, I read books and I used my dolls as students while I pretended to be a teacher. I think it has always been pretty clear I was not interested in motherhood. Now, as an adult, I understand myself and my preference for being alone the majority of the time, my need for quiet. I love visits to and from my family, but they are joyous because they are finite; I know I will have silence in a few days or weeks, and can therefore enjoy being part of a rowdy crowd.
And so I wonder if this preference for solitude is why I moved to another country. I love my sisters, and all my family, fiercely. I sobbed uncontrollably before I moved abroad. I didn’t know why I was leaving, only that I felt compelled.
For a long time, I thought Jess was angry at me for moving. Perhaps she was. Perhaps I thought she had a right to be angry. I am eight years older. She is the first sister I can distinctly remember meeting as a newborn baby, in the hospital. I don’t know why, but her little cot was parked in the hallway outside the hospital room. Maybe she was en-route somewhere. I stood beside it and stared down at her. Another little sister.
She was gravely ill around a year old, and I think it was then I took on a protective role. Maybe all of us did. For me, over the years that urge to protect morphed into something more maternal. I picked her up from school, helped with homework, cooked meals.
When she was fourteen, it became apparent my mother couldn’t be responsible for her anymore. While I had just finished college and was planning to start my own career in a yet-to-be-determined location, I told my father I would postpone any move, stay close and be her guardian so that she could finish school in the same place she’d lived most of her life, close to her friends and everything she knew. He said no, and she went to live with him and my step-mom.
So I followed her south, found a job, visited her most weekends, made sure she was OK. On her first night away at college, I called Dad and asked him how we know she’s safe. “We just have to trust she remembers everything we’ve taught her.” During those four years, I’d take her grocery shopping, proofread her papers, give her advice on finding a job. When she graduated, she moved in with me. Rent was free at first, and gradually increased. I wouldn’t be a coddler.
Her face when I announced my plans to move away is burned into my memory. An excited smile for me, and then the slow onset of…consternation. She would need to move out on her own.
How did I just leave my child? I really didn’t think about it at all. I thought about how much I would miss all of my sisters, but not about what they might miss, what Jess might need. This is the definition of selfish. Yet none of my sisters have ever, in nine years, told me I should not have moved. This is the definition of generosity.
I think my move is the moment little Jess became Adult Jess, at least in my mind. I left my kid behind and gained a sister in her place. She thrived in my absence. She is practical and level-headed, driven and successful. She travels more than I ever dreamed, found her ideal partner, always wants to learn new things.
In my experience/research, mother-daughter relationships become conflicted when the daughter demands too much of the mother, disallowing the mother an identity apart from MOTHER. Then, the daughter grows up and no longer relies on the mother, who might have sacrificed a lot to be MOTHER. She feels cast aside and resentful. But what Jess and I have managed is a balance. A mutual respect for each other’s identities. I was there for her when she needed me, and she let me leave when I needed to. I don’t begrudge her independence. I’m proud of it.
I didn’t do any of the hard work she has done to get where she is. But I did teach her things. I kept her safe. I set a good example. As my dad said, I just had to hope it would all work out, and it has.
The day of her wedding, my sisters and I spent all morning together, and I explained that I saw no reason to cry over Adult Jess getting married. Then the photographer arrived to get some photos of us getting ready. We posed for a shot of me clasping a necklace on Jess, and I unexpectedly burst into tears. I thought it was just the memory of doing this kind of thing for her when she was a child, but that’s not it. I know that time has passed. That it’s passing. That isn’t news.
What I felt was pride. She didn’t need me to fasten her necklace. But she let me.
❤️