Sibling rivalry

Did she intentionally knock over my sippy cup? Hard to say.

Colby and I have been getting along well since I've been out here. I've been trying to give her space and not annoy her and she (I'm sure) is working hard not to get annoyed. So far we have been successful and have avoided any fights and even snapping at each other. At diner the other night one of her friends, a mom, asked how old we were before we started being friends. Colby and I paused. I was sure that this mother was curious about her own children and how long it would be before they stopped hitting each other, so I was applying the question to our childhood. I thought "we started to get along when we realized that we had a common enemy: our mother." Colby answered differently, "after our mother die," she said succinctly. "Oh, she means our current wave of compatibility? Well, that's a daily effort," I thought.

When I moved to Rome, it was the first time that I made friends that didn't already know Colby. I was still in high school and living with my parents, so an absent family member didn't register like it would at college. These were friends who knew my family, listened to my gripes and hung out at my house. Until Colby came to visit for Christmas, it hadn't occurred to me that they hadn't witnessed our real family dynamic. One evening a group of my friends were over, meeting Colby for the first time. We were sitting in the living room when she and I headed to the kitchen with some plates. A very normal (for us anyway) round of snapping and verbal backhands commenced that I thought nothing about until I turned to leave and found Marco standing outside the door holding some glasses. He had a horrified look on this face and whispered "Is everything all right?" "Sure. Why?" I responded. He nodded towards my sister. I shrugged but thought "What? This is us getting along." We all returned to the group, no differently than before. He retold the story later. "Anna has a dark side. I've never seen her go for the jugular like that. Don't get her angry..." he regaled with a new found respect. All I could think was, "Boys! They have no idea what a real fight is. He should see us when we're trying to inflict damage."

While we were both in college, Colby and I were relatively good friends. We both even traveled to visit each other at our respective schools.  (That was the infamous time when Colby looked around the BC campus and said "Could you have found a more homogeneous place to go to school?" She was comparing Irish Catholic BC to the much more Jewish and international UPenn and found us lacking; that is, until that evening. I answered a pounding on my door to 'spring game' drunk Stalin, who proceeded to lift me over his shoulder and spin me around. [Since my days as a small child, Stalin is the only person who has ever lifted me off the ground, and remarkably he's done it more than once!] "Come upstairs, we're having a party," he insisted. Upstairs Colby met an equally drunk Rupert, who leered and immediately suggested "You come sit by me..." "You wanted diversity," I chuckled to her 'deer in the headlights' expression. My boys... they have excellent timing! xoxo)

After college she moved to San Fransisco and we grew apart, talked less and less, and when we fought it was always a doozy. When you don't have to interact on a daily or even regular basis, you choose if you want a person to be a part of your life. And as our fights got worse, we basically made that decision and stopped talking. (Obviously it was more complicated than that, but we'll leave those details for a more appropriate venue.) We didn't start speaking regularly again until my mother got sick. While we once got along fighting against my mother, and then fought about my mother, now we were working hard to get along for my mother.

It was also becoming clear that the only person who will ever really understand my family dynamic is the one other person who grew up with it. And after Leola died, Colby and I were all we had left of that shared history. We started being nice to each other.

We proceed by baby steps. She stayed on the East Coast while we worked together cleaning out the house. I traveled to San Fransisco to visit for a long weekend. Last year we successfully navigated Christmas at her house and this summer I spent a week with her and the kids on the lake. Each visit we have slowly increased the time we spend in each others' company. Before deciding to rent an apartment and stay in San Fransisco for an extended period, I called and asked her if she thought it was a good idea. Not "will I enjoy San Fransisco?" but, "will we kill each other/permanently ruining our relationship, if we are around one another that much." Like I said, baby steps.

Well, so far so good. But, I have noticed a trend beginning.

We throw Leola references at each other like wrestlers whacking one another over the head with folding metal chairs. "Wow, that was a Leola move," I'll say. "Your car smells like mom's" she'll retaliate. I guess some instincts never completely go away... but now we have a new weapon: the subtly implied, "You're turning into mom." Horror!