Always Together, Forever Different
My sister and I are only 16 months
apart in age. I was born in May of 1993. It was hardly a year later when
Maribeth was born in September of 1994.
I honestly don’t see how my mom managed to watch the two of us all day
by herself while my dad was at work. Imagine having two little blond haired
blue eyed girls, both in dippers, one just barely walking, and the other still a
brand new little baby.
When we would go out to the grocery
store or anywhere in public, my mom would dress us alike. Matching whiny the
poo denim jumpers, Maribeth with the blue undershirt and me with the green. She
must have thought it was adorable putting us in matching outfits, but complete
strangers would always come up to us and say “Oh! How cute! Are you twins?”
That always bugged me. After all, I am the oldest.
When we were around the ages of
three and four my dad was teaching me how to ride a bike. He loosed the bolts
of my little blue and pink bike’s training wheels making it tilt one way or the
other. The point was so that I could still ride bikes with my friends next door
and learn how to balance it on two wheels all at the same time. Genius right?
Well, after a while of that I was kind of getting the hang of this whole
balancing on two wheels thing.
On a sunny day that summer Dad took
off the training wheels and I was going to learn how to ride that bike. He
stood right behind me, holding the bottom of my seat, and then I started
peddling with him holding on and jogging right beside me. I felt safe with him
there so close, smelling like freshly cut grass and sweat. “Tell me when you’re
ready for me to let go Linz,” He would say. My panicked, high pitched three
year old voice, would say, “No! I’m not ready! I’m not ready!”
Well, after a few times of him
letting go when I wasn’t ready and falling on the concrete, we moved the lesson
to the grass. It was harder to pedal through, but much softer to land in. I
kept trying and kept trying. It always
took me a while to learn things. I would practice and practice for hours on
end, no matter what the task was I wanted to accomplish. Maribeth on the other
hand can pick up just about anything and be the best at it. It was no different
when it came to riding a two wheel bike.
Maribeth came running down the driveway, her
face perfectly round, a thousand little freckles on her nose, towards my dad
screaming “Lemme try! Lemme try!” My
bike was two sizes too big for her and her stubby little legs hardly reached
the pedals but she started going with Dad holding on to the seat. She may not
have been able to ride perfectly but she certainly got farther than I did. She
had perfect balance. She could walk across a two by four piece of lumber
without wavering a bit. I found myself asking the question, why does she have
to do everything I do? Even at a young
age the competitive nature between the two of us was there.
Middle school is an awkward stage in
life for pretty much everybody. For me that was, without a doubt, true. It’s
that time when you’re trying to make friends and figure out where you fit in. I
was never a very outgoing person and rarely had more than two friends at a
time. Maribeth was friends with everybody. She knew everybody and everybody
knew her. She was a straight A plus student and all of the teachers adored her.
I was terrible at math and would get beyond frustrated with my homework. After
school Mom would have to sit down with me and check all my homework to make
sure that it was done right. Not so with Maribeth. There were times when my mom
would ask Maribeth questions about my homework! And she was never wrong. I
would get so mad at her for being smarter than me. “I can’t believe you need
help with that Lindsey. It’s so easy! Don’t you pay attention in class?”
“Yeah,
I pay attention…” I would reply.
I resented her and her smarts. I was
embarrassed by how good she was at everything and jealous of her good grades.
She didn’t even have to try.
Once I became a freshman in high
school I had finally started to get out of my shell and I was getting better at
school. I remember feeling so excited to start high school because none of the
teachers or other students knew who my sister was. It would be a fresh start!
One week of high school had passed
and Maribeth came home with a note from her math teacher. It said something
along the lines of Maribeth is way too smart to only be in Algebra 1 and I think
it would be a good idea for her to skip a level a year early and enroll in
geometry at the high school. My
translation… Maribeth is going to walk over to my school and take a higher
level math class than I am taking and everyone will know that she is smarter
than me and my life will be ruined. After all, I am older than her. I should be
smarter right? Of course know I realize
I was being dramatic and irrational but that embarrassment and jealousy was
back again.
All throughout high school people, I
didn’t even recognize, would wave at me in the hall way and people would stop
by my locker and say “Hi Maribeth! How’s your day going?” I would reply in an
annoyed tone, “Yeah…my name is Lindsey. I’m pretty sure you want to talk to my
YOUNGER sister Maribeth.” I was tired of being mistaken for her. Sure, we
looked kind of similar, but Maribeth was only 5’4 and I was 5’8. It’s true that
our hair was almost always the same length and color, but her’s was much more
curly, whereas mine laid flat.
My high school wasn’t incredibility large. My
graduating class was just under 200, so it wasn’t long before everyone at least
recognized everyone else. But no one knew who I was, I was just Maribeth’s
sister mistaken for Maribeth at least once a week.
I got a part time job in town at
Dairy Queen. It was my first job I obtained all on my own. Previously, I had
worked at a pig farm that was owned by the company that my dad works for so he
basically got the job for me. I loved working at Dairy Queen and I was good at
it. Working there while going to school and being in the band and on the swim
team kept me busy. It was a good break from all of that though and it paid for
gas. I was there for a year and as soon as she could, Maribeth applied to work
there too. So we worked there together. No big deal right? I kept telling
myself that it wasn’t. But that competitive side crept back up and it was
frustrating at times because she was just as good as I was, if not better. I
was beginning to think that I was just going to be my younger sisiter’s shadow
for the rest of my life.
Maribeth was and still is involved
in everything. In high school she played basketball for two years, softball all
four, and she swam on the swim team with me my senior year. She was in a ton of
clubs and even president of a few of them. She also played travel softball all
year around. Now she goes to Grace College in Warsaw, Indiana where she plays
college softball. It wasn’t that she was involved in all of these things; she
was and still is good at them. She graduated third in her class, which doesn’t
compare to my place at 78. My way of dealing with all of her success was to
basically ignore her. When we did talk, all we did was argue about who was
driving to school (even though it was my car) and every other petty argument
that came up. “Lindsey! Lets’ go! I’m going to be late to first hour!”
“It’s
too early Maribeth, We’ve got like ten minutes until we need to leave.”
“Fine,
then I’m going to drive.”
“Oh
no you’re not. It’s my car…” This was a typical weekday morning.
It wasn’t until I went away to
college that I finally got that fresh start and a better attitude towards my
sister. I moved two hours away from my little home town in northern Indiana to
the big city of Indianapolis.
Maribeth sent me a letter while I
was away and it changed everything. Not once did I ever tell her directly that
I was jealous of her or that I resented her for being better than me. I just
kind of left well enough alone and we went our separate ways. In the letter she
talked about how all that time she had looked up to me. Which was why she was
always doing the same things I was. She said how much she misses me now that
I’m not driving her to school and working at Dairy Queen. In a lot of ways
being away has made us closer.
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