Family Vacation Videos

There’s the sudden realization that my sisters were always cooler than me. Way cooler than me. Simply because I, throughout my adolescence, tried too hard to be cool and they, in the tenacity of youth, didn’t have to try. And yet, though they always seemed deny it adamantly back then, they now attest, unashamedly, to the many ways that they admired, even idolized me. We are watching an old family vacation video and Lindsay says, “I remember that swimsuit. I couldn’t wait for you to grow out of it so that I could have it.” I am shocked. I never knew back then that either Ashley or Lindsay liked or coveted anything I had or did. I wanted them to. I really, really wanted them to. But they always seemed so confident and secure in the unyielding sisterly support that they, as twins, offered one another and I, as the non-twin, was generally exempt from. The news that they, at that age, did indeed see me as someone to look up to is thoroughly surprising.

The debate regenerates from time to time and we still are at an impasse as to who was the more injured party. I felt ostracized by them, the twins, and they felt ostracized by me, the older sibling. At least, as I cannot help but point out whenever the argument arises in conversation, they felt rejected together. I had no ally. In my family, my parents had each other, my sisters had each other, and then there was me.

In the video, a little girl is swinging in a hammock. She is playing with a plastic toy dog and she is singing to herself, a song that she is making up as she goes. I am so outstandingly jealous of that girl, jealous that she doesn’t worry about being too old for her toy, jealous of her unconcern for how much sense her lyrics make and who might hear them. The camera spans right across the family campsite and I can see her older sister, examining her reflection in the minivan’s windows, feeling restless.

I forced myself to grown up too fast, obsessed with winning the approval of others. But part of growing up--as once said a young nun with an uncanny ability to put into words the self-examining questions I had hitherto been scared to ask--is learning to simply accept what is an not obsess over what could be or might have been. No one can ever truly know what others think of her. Slowly, very slowly, I am digesting these truths and learning to apply them.