The Youngest

A telltale sign that someone doesn't know me at all is if they don't know that I am the youngest of three. I truly cannot fathom how people can have siblings and it not be one of the biggest parts of who they are, and I realize, in writing this, that that is a blessing for me to say. Because, in my eyes, the very first things I ever became were daughter and sister. 

Before I knew how to tie my shoes, I knew that my sister hated mismatched socks and that my brother could have spent weeks reading in his bedroom if you let him. I could have told you their middle names before I could tell you state capitals, and I could identify who was coming up the stairs by the sound of their footsteps. 

It is the most dramatic and yet the most mundane thing in the world to grow up next to someone. Because our tiny handprints are in the concrete of our sidewalk, all in a row, and we share the memory of what it was like to bury our favorite childhood dog on the rainy morning after he died. We would fight each other to tears and pack each other's lunches on the same day, knowing who liked creamy peanut butter more than the crunchy kind. 

I think about it all now, how strange it is that the people who molded me most have always just been a few years older. I never really considered that we were children altogether because I always saw them as more than that, as if they were so much wiser than their years simply because they were my siblings. They've always been older; they've always had to walk through it all first. 

So now I wonder, now that we're all in different houses and starting families of our own, if I look at the world through a lens they gave me. My humor, I think, is mostly pieced together by theirs, and I'll always do my ponytails the way my sister taught me. I'll always think of them when I hear certain songs, and I'll miss them worse when Mom and Dad do something we'd laugh about. Worst of all, I'll be offended when someone forgets I'm a sibling because they must not know me at all. 

It makes me think about the intentionality of God. I could be anything at all, and yet, I am a little sister because He knew that was best.