I was born May 7, 1957. Goodness, that means I will be sixty-one this year. OUCH! How time flies by. On my 3rd birthday, May 7, 1960, my mother decided that I didn’t need toys for my birthday. Instead, she decided what I needed for my birthday present was … a baby sister. So, Tracy was born and I was so happy to have a sister instead of presents … NOT!  I apparently asked my mother if we could stick her back where she came from. Of course, my mother couldn’t, but when you are three years old – you don’t understand logic. I was a very unhappy three year old.

Tracy was everything I wasn’t, which was part of the problem I think of why we didn’t get along when we were children. Tracy was an extrovert. She got along great with people, she had a bubbly personality and she loved to party, whereas I was an introvert. People think being an introvert is being shy and retiring and that’s not what it means at all. An introvert doesn’t do well in crowds or large groups of people. It takes too much energy to interact, and I hated small talk. I like very small groups of one or maybe two close friends and even then preferably people I was related too.  I don’t do bubbly and I hate to party – I am however, a blunt, direct, and straight to the point type of person. Many take that as I am rude or intimidating. I’m not, I just hate small talk.

I used to tease Tracy about being the light sister and me being the dark sister. It didn’t have to do with her being the good sister and me being the bad, but more that Tracy was outgoing and what you saw is what you got. Me? I don’t trust people and I kept my own counsel until I did trust you, so no one ever knew what I was like and that too intimidated people.

We were so different, or so I thought – that it didn’t really bother me that we spent almost our entire adult life on opposite sides of the country. Tracy on the west coast and me on the east coast. It wasn’t until one day I decided I had enough of the east coast and moved to Albuquerque. Finally, I was on the same side of the country as Tracy, who was living in San Diego at the time. I had a health scare and it was enough that it worried Tracy almost as much as it did me. She invited me out to stay with her in San Diego. She was also apparently living in the Ocean Beach part of San Diego and less than six blocks from the ocean. It sounded ideal and I took her up on her offer.

Living with Tracy, I learned that yes we were opposites in that she was an extrovert and I was an introvert, but we were connected much closer than either of us thought. We started talking what we called sister talk, which was she would start a sentence and I would finish it and vice versa or we would say the same thing at the same time. It spooked a lot of people, but it only got stronger the longer we lived together. We had a blast the year we were in San Diego. The day she learned of her divorce we got wasted on buttery nipples and then slid down the dunes the city puts up around the ocean during winter to keep the water from flooding the streets. We were laughing so hard and trying to help each other stand up, but we kept falling down. A police man apparently had been watching us and asked if we were alright. Tracy, when drinking, has a mouth on her and replied “Do we look alright?” I replied a little more calmly and friendlier “We are celebrating my sister’s divorce and we only live six blocks that way” Pointing in the general area we lived. He laughed and told us to try to keep it down. Apparently, that didn’t happen as Tracy’s neighbor said he could hear us all the way down the street.

When her tour was up, neither of us wanted to separate, so we both moved to Tempe, AZ and I got a job with State Farm Insurance where she already had a job. Over the course of the next six years, we spent a lot of time together, having fun, visiting my family and site seeing. Her daughter, Kira moved to Arizona as did our mother, so we had more family to socialize with. Tracy bought a house in Maricopa where she lives with her husband, Michael and I moved in with my guy in Tucson which is a little over an hour away. We are still close and we still do our sister talk when we get together, much to everyone’s amusement.

I learned over the years, that Tracy and I are not so different as I thought and I am very happy after all that I didn’t get toys for my third birthday, because toys break and they become outdated, whereas sisters? Well sisters are forever.

I love you Sister Mine and very happy to have you as my birthday present!