Some Thoughts About My Sister

This morning finds me en route to home. My younger sister developed a condition in her pregnancy called preeclampsia, or toxemia, which has caused her blood pressure to spike, and caused her body to swell uncomfortably. While preeclampsia is not uncommon, her situation was severe enough that the doctors thought it wise to induce labor last night, more than a week ahead of her expected delivery date.

Given the relative precariousness of the situation, and the fact that this is her first child, I immediately booked a flight back to Oklahoma. What struck me about the situation was how easy it was to put aside my schedule, pack my bags and leave - thanks in no small part to my loving, and supportive wife, and the innate kindness of a close friend.

With my flight booked, my thoughts turned from the stress of final exams, to one fraught with worry about my kid sister who primarily communicates with me through text messages and triple word scores on "Words with Friends." She's good at that game. Very good.

That's life I suppose. Schedules, jobs, marriages, and now families have a knack for ebbing away the simplicity of relationship we had in our youth. Given how busy life can become, it's probably remarkable that we communicate at all.

But growing up in Oklahoma, the summers were endless. And with two working parents throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and with two doting grandparents, we only naturally spent most of our time together. The only obligation we ever had was to come in when Grandma called us for lunch. Or to be ready to go and hit the ponds for some fishing when Papa got off work. Aside from these, the hours were ours to while away. And we did. From chunking dirt clods at one another in our fields, to sword fighting (with actual sticks and the odd bayonet we could muster from the barn), to playing with our assortment of "action figures" and dolls, our afternoons and evenings were nothing if not carefree.

This is not to say that our childhood was all rosy. Our parents like many kids' parents from my generation fought and argued as we grew up. I distinctly remember nights where we just held each other while Mom and Dad bellowed from the other room. There was, of course, never any real violence. But to children, hearing Mom and Dad argue, was like listening to the earth fall apart around us - kind of like the State of California in the film 2012.

But somewhere between the Oklahoma summers and nights huddled together, my sister and I developed a sibling bond that only siblings can have. My youngest sister and I have something similar, but with Andrea it was always different because we, more or less, grew up together. And even while I navigated the frustrations of high school (brief aside, is there any other way to describe high school than frustrating?), and she navigated the rigors of junior high, we slowly began to drift apart. We had our own friends all of a sudden, and playing with He-Men and X-men in the backyard suddenly didn't seem quite so cool.

And then college happened.

After spending years in veritable, close proximity, all of a sudden, I was thrust 2,000 miles across the country, and my sister was left to the wilds of her own high school hell. Letters became increasingly infrequent. Emails once in a blue moon. And almost no text messages to speak of. This was, after all, the early 2000s, before the advent of unlimited text messaging packages, and before landline phones became an anachronism. Long-distance charges were very much a reality. But we did manage to send each other the odd "boob" message on our pagers. We were a bit older, but not necessarily more mature.

The funny thing about life is that, somehow, things tend to come full circle. As my misadventures with various girls became more frequent, and after a couple of ill-conceived moves across the eastern seaboard, my relationship with my sister began to, well, grow. All of a sudden, we were talking again. And really, things picked up as if there was no four year hiatus called college, and no year or so spent working in the urban jungle. We weren't playing with Micro-Machines and Polly Pockets anymore. But we were texting regularly, emailing more frequently, and calling once Verizon got its act together and started offering reasonable cell phone plans. Most importantly, whatever the medium, we talked.

And we talked about a lot of things. We talked about relationships. We talked about whether marriage was still a viable institution. We talked about our mutual, political love affair with Mike Huckabee. We talked about our parents, and our younger sister. We talked about how best to do damage control when the inevitable family conflicts arose. Over time, we talked about more serious topics, like our own marriages - as opposed to marriage as an abstract institution. We talked about jobs, and law school, and our hopes for the future. We talked about life.

So, last summer when she called to tell me she was engaged, and early last fall when she called to tell me she was pregnant, I got a little misty-eyed, knowing that my kid sister wasn't a kid anymore, but an amazing, beautiful, competent woman - who is now an amazing, beautiful competent wife and soon-to-be mother.

And so, when I received word that complications had developed, that the doctors were inducing labor, it was no surprise at all really that I dropped my finals, and my pocketbook to schedule the earliest possible flight to Oklahoma. That's just what a big brother should do.

The early reports this morning are that she's doing well. With a bit of luck, I might even make it in time to be with my family before my nephew is born. For now, as I soar above the Rockies en route to Denver, and then to home, I am eminently thankful, proud, and  blessed to have such a fine sister.