Sister, sister

My sister, Sandy, and I are two years apart in age.  However, at first glance on more than one occasion we have been mistaken for twins.  To the trained eye this seems ludicrous. We are as different as tea and coffee.  She clearly takes after one crooked and cracked branch of the family tree and I another.  She is tall and fairer skinned, me a runt with dark hair and eyes.  Yet still to this day if we can’t, if even just for a moment, convince onlookers we may share a birthdate, it is at least never hard to believe we are sisters. 

As young girls mom romanticized the idea of twins and would sometimes dress us alike.  We had matching blouses or jackets but always in different colors, a cute idea when we were still small but quickly outgrown. One of the most notorious of these outfits were the long white lace dresses we wore on holidays.  Made of chiffon material and reaching our feet, we wore these dresses for a few years. Each of us was adorned with a different colored ribbon as a belt, everything else down to the shoes identical. At Christmas one of us would wear a green ribbon and the other red; for Easter one yellow and the other pink.  

Sandy was in late elementary school when she outgrew her dress and was “over” matching her tag-a-long and copy everything, baby sister. The last time I wore mine I remember stepping on the bottom hem while playing in the driveway with friends (always a good idea with a white lace dress on) and tearing the lower half off (my clumsiness once again making an appearance).  Yet, fortunately for me, I grew into Sandy’s and wore hers on a few more occasions. 

This week, I was sufficiently surprised upon opening a box of mom’s treasures and finding Sandy’s dress, complete with yellow ribbon. It’s moments like these that I rejoice in her pack rat ways.  I feel I could shake the dress out like a rug and instead of dust memories would fill the air.  They’d be visions of opening Christmas gifts amongst our cousins as we sit on the shag carpeted floor at grandma and grandpa’s on Christmas Eve. Or shamelessly putting an Easter egg in the offering basket at church (one of mom’s favorites). Memories of tears of pain as mom pulled rollers out of our hair only to find hours later the once buoyant curls have fallen flat. If only clothes could tell of their adventures. 

Today Sandy and I have very different styles.  I can think of no occasion short of bridesmaid dresses when we would dress similarly. Yet, I now think fondly of those days when we bore the family pride of wearing matching outfits. What a joy it is to share memories of the same dresses and occasions.  How lovely it is to have a sister, the one person on earth who shared a room with you as kids, who remembers the red orange shag carpet and yellow walls, who drew an imaginary line down that same room with heated threats if you crossed into her side. What a blessing it is to have the exact same parents, the same first car, the same first job. Perhaps that is why today it is still difficult to tell us apart; our faces tell the same stories. Even coffee and tea in all their differences come from the same heat source--water.