Sisters

By Crivenica
I thought twice when my sister, Louise, asked me to contribute to this blog. Keeping up a blog seemed like a lot of work. I know because I started a blog four years ago - The Absent-Minded Cook - as a creative outlet away from my professional world. I stopped updating it because it became another pressure on top of my other responsibilities and it took away the little free time I had. Or perhaps I was just being lazy and was not up for the work needed to keep up my blog: trying out new recipes, adding my personal touch to a new dish, taking good pictures of the cooking/baking process and the finished products, and then writing and publishing the blog. So yes, I wondered if I wanted to commit to this blog.

Some of you know that my older sister had gone through some rough patches last year and being a bystander living on the other side of the world was not fun. So I tried to be there for her in anyway that I could: we chat on YM every morning and night, we do family Skype every weekend with the parents in Jakarta, and I did manage to spend a month in Chicago with her last fall. We had a blast while I was there, but I did see sadness still lurked inside her. So when she showed me this new blog, which was a spin-off from an earlier blog, I was glad how she was focusing on the positive and great things in her life. And so I decided, why the hell not? I’m in. Writing has become a joy to her and I’m supporting that. What I just realized this morning before I started writing this was that as a co-blogger I am also being supported by her. I do not feel the same pressure I had when I started my own blog because my sister has taken up most of the writing already and she shoots up posting ideas left and right. Blog has become fun again.

Growing up I didn’t feel the connection I have with Louise now. We shared a small room almost all through the years I was in grade school and middle school, but I didn’t feel like we were roommates then. It was not our room. It was Louise’s room. I was more like the addition that she couldn’t deny, but could ignore. I have no hard feeling about it. We were teenagers. We were in very different separate worlds especially toward the end when she was in high school. Louise was the cool big sister who listened to hard rock music, wore ripped jeans and Doc Marten’s boots. I was the quiet and shy middle sister who listened to New Kids On The Block and was in love with River Phoenix. Annette, our younger sister, was even in a whole other world. She was still the lanky, goofy kid who hadn’t even blossomed yet.

Then Louise moved to the US. I started high school. Annette grew into her limbs. Three years passed and basically we continued to have separate lives. Then I moved to the US, left my life to join Louise’s life and for awhile I felt I was in the fringe again. But life went on. Annette’s world, at this point, was even further away from our lives and I think she felt and maybe still feels, even more disconnected to us (she is four years younger than me and seven years Louise’s junior).

Through the years, I felt the relationship between Louise and I was good, but it was still an older-younger sisters relationship where Louise knew better and I was just a kid. And perhaps when I returned home after college, Annette and I might have a similar relationship. It was not until years later when I had been in the work force for a few years, established a career for myself, gained self-confidence, and knew exactly who I was that I felt more equal to my older sister. But it is in these more recent years that I feel we are also friends. Mind you, she still thinks because she’s the eldest, she knows best :)

Now, Annette is married, lives in Norway, and really is living a separate life from the rest of us. She has a husband who loves her, a job that she likes and I wish her all the happiness in the world. The thing is we don’t connect with our youngest sister very often, but not from lack of trying. Time difference, work schedules and social life also play a part. The fact that she lives in Norway also a downside. It’s easier for Louise and I to see each other because I travel to US at least once a year if not more. So it was so wonderful when the three of us managed to travel home about the same time last November. We only had a few days with Annette, but it was really good to see her. And maybe another year has to pass until we see each other again, but I hope it won’t take a year for all of us to talk to each other again.

If instant messaging, Skype, and other means of communication just won’t do, I am hoping Annette will join Louise and I in contributing to this blog and make this a sister-joint-effort blog. Wouldn’t that be something? It will be the first project the three of us will work on together. Then who knows what’s next. As long as we stay connected, no matter how far away we live from each other, I’ll be happy.

Love,
Ri