My True Mother

I look up to my older sister, Emily.

In a lot of ways, she raised me. My parents were emotionally neglectful and largely spent their parenting years doing their own thing, so Emily took over. She taught me everything I needed to know growing up, not because it was her responsibility, but because she loved me unconditionally enough to take on the responsibility of raising me.

She protected me from my father’s outbursts and anger. If I couldn’t stomach the food on my plate and my dad would scream at me until two in the morning, red in the face, Emily would quietly eat it for me so it could be over. When my dad demanded that I clean my room without ever showing me how, Emily would come in afterward and actually teach me how to put things away instead of just shoving them out of the middle of the floor.

When my mother was emotionally unavailable, Emily was the one who comforted me. She taught me what was happening to my body as I grew. When I had meltdowns, she helped me calm down. When I was sick, she took care of me. If I had a bad dream, I went to her bed instead of my parents’, because I was more afraid of them than I was of my nightmares.

When I got hurt, she made it better. Once I sat on a cactus, and she pulled the needles out of my legs and my backside without ever making me feel embarrassed. She brushed my hair when I was little because I couldn’t do it myself. She taught me about my menstrual cycle, how to use a pad, how to shave my legs and my armpits. She shielded me from adults who were cruel to me, including my grandmother.

Anytime I needed to talk about anything, I went to her. She protected me from bullies. When she went out with her friends, even though they were five or six years older than me, she always wanted me to come along. When she moved out of the house, I felt completely isolated, because I didn’t have a relationship with my parents without her there.

I was the maid of honor at her wedding. Her colors were purple and white, but I couldn’t find a purple dress, so she let me wear pink. I was around fifteen at the time. I even hosted her bachelorette party in my bedroom with her other two bridesmaids, women I had grown up around because Emily always brought me with her.

When she had her daughter, I was her babysitter. When I was thirteen and had a swollen lymph node in my collarbone that doctors feared might be cancer, Emily was living in Colorado while we were in Texas. As soon as she heard, she drove straight through without stopping to sleep so she could be there for my surgery and recovery.

She gifted me my first car. Her husband taught me how to two-step in their kitchen. The summer I was eighteen, between high school and whatever came next, I stayed with her, her husband, and her daughter for two and a half months. It was the best two and a half months of my life.

After I graduated with my associate’s degree, I moved back to Colorado and lived near them for a year. I drove her daughter to school and picked her up just so I could spend time with them every day. When I moved back to Texas and got married, we talked on the phone daily.

When I had my oldest son, Brontosaurus, she was on the phone with me in the delivery room. She was on the phone with me for all three of my children’s births. She video chatted with my kids almost every day from the time they were born, and even now, we still talk almost daily.

Anytime I need anything, I call her. I go to her for advice because she doesn’t placate me. She tells me when I’m wrong and explains why in a way I can understand. She is the kindest person I know, the kind of person who would put herself in danger just to make someone smile.

She has had an incredibly hard time medically. She has been mostly bedridden for years, and I deeply admire the grace she has shown while dealing with it. Even now, she makes it a point to go to conventions with her daughter and play games with her son. She is always there for them, no matter what they need. She would burn the world for those babies.

She isn’t perfect. She admits her faults and tries her damnedest to do her best every single day.

And she does it all with a smile and a hug.