A Paige in My Book

It was late and my husband was already in bed with the news on and his book open. I was ruffling around in clothes, deciding what to wear to a baby shower I was helping host back in my hometown of Moultrie, GA. My closet consistently proves to be a dragon I fight. It is ferocious and I need strength before entering. I love fashion but stuffing it all into a closet? Please! I need more space and that’s the truth!

My cell phone rang and I popped my head up like a ferret in the weeds. I scrambled, lunged and caught the call before the phone stopped ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
It was my sister and we always go “Hey.” “Hey.”
Giggling she said, “You’ve got to hear this!” And she turned up her car radio full blast. I heard it loud and clear...

“It's Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time It's Tricky...it's Tricky (Tricky) Tricky (Tricky)”

By this time my husband was looking up from his book with an expression that declared ‘I’m not surprised by anything you do anymore.’ You see, my sister and I had both turned our speakerphones on and I had proceeded to put on my own hip-hop freestyle performance. Not that he should’ve minded that right? Things like that is one of the reasons he fell in love with me, right? Surely.

Well, the fun didn’t end there, Funky Cold Medina immediately followed It’s Tricky and the party kept hoppin’ for me and my sister Paige. Just think back to this classic. How much fun is it to anticipate when Tone Loc says “Break It Down!”? By the end of our long distance fun my husband was just staring at me with not even bewilderment on his face and her husband had come out to her vehicle that was parked in her drive way bumping from the bass and piled high with three sleeping kids in the back!

Do you have someone you can do this with? I hope so. It feels really good.

My sister is this person for me. We have a basic understanding of one another. We share basic sameness. We stand with our arms crossed and our weight shifted to our left leg, often with our right foot propped on our left calf much like the yoga tree pose. We do this simultaneously and then see each other and quickly adjust so that we don’t look strange to other people. We say the same things at the same time and then laugh and say the same thing at the same time again. We sing sentences. When people that we know well, like our parents or husbands, ask us questions we sing the answers back to them emulating Disney musical moments. We pick up produce from fruit bins and then can’t put it back and choose another piece of fruit because we feel badly that we would hurt the feelings of the fruit sitting in our hand. We can’t let it feel discarded! We do many, many things in life that bond us and make us uniquely similar sisters.

On the flip side… we differ enormously. Paige has three children. I have three dogs. Paige’s foot is a size 9 and I wear a 5 and a half. As far as that goes, gee wiz, she’s 5’9” and I’m 5’1” shooting for 5’2” that should come any day now. I love being in cities like New York City. It makes me feel invigorated and inspired. Seeing all the people and ideas and creations while I walk down city streets in my bubble of anonymity makes me gloriously happy. Paige feels claustrophobic in that environment and craves wide-open spaces. She resides in Texas… so thinking about this sentence I’m writing makes me think that the Dixie Chicks hit the nail on the head with that song of theirs. My sister wants to live in a field with nothing around her but her land. Whereas she is laid back by nature, I’m annoyingly intense. When watching Billy Madison, she laughs at the shampoo vs. conditioner scene so hard she has herself in stitches and I am watching the movie with my head cocked trying to understand the humor. I, instead, choose to watch Paige laugh and laugh at that.

She has always let me shine. In home videos she stepped back while I hogged the screen time. She let me tag along at all her birthday parties. I am inevitably at the top of the group pyramid or at the end of the row of girls making some dramatic face to ruin the photograph. She tried like crazy to be the first follower on my blog page. She battled the website all morning, and after reading my first posting, said “I loved it!”… but warned me about cigarettes! I found myself being a KD in college just like she was. It was a way I could be myself and be like my big sister too.

Sisterhood, or any relationship that bonds two people together, is a treasure. We are goofy, we vent, and we need no explanations unless we choose to explain. In my life’s book I have a Paige. It’s dog-eared. I always turn to her first.