As expected, seeing my family had a calming, cathartic effect on me. It has taken many years for home trips not to stress me out, but my relationships there are finally where I feel like they need to be and I could have stayed much longer this go around. Sometimes you just want your mommy and your sissy. I think the whole trip can be summed up in these three pictures.

Sweet

Comforting

Loving

My mom reads this blog (everyone say hi!) so she’s going to read this. I have to let her know that it makes me giggle when she is flummoxed at the differences between myself and my sister, Livvy.

I’m a total type A, perfectionist, overachiever who will lay awake at night worrying if I remembered to turn off the computer at work. Keep in mind, once I’m home, there is NOTHING I can do about the computer at work. I’m an introvert who loves to read and a homebody who likes nothing more than to stay at home and relax.

Livvy’s a total type B, cool as a cucumber, it’ll get done when it gets done kind of girl. She’s smart as can be and she’s incredibly sociable and likable. She makes friends easy and doesn’t really hold a grudge. She’s sweet-natured and people gravitate towards her in ways that they never will in my direction. I envy her ability to just “let it go.” She gets good grades without putting forth the hours it would take me and lives her life with a smile.

I’m a responsible first born.

She’s the baby that came 16 years later.

She’s my only sibling.

I adore her, madly. She’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met and I’ve met a lot of people. There isn’t sibling rivalry and I think she’s awesome.

So, when my mom calls and tells me about my sissy’s hijinks, it’s hard for me not to giggle, because my sister is a typical, effervescent baby of the family. This must be like a cool splash of water after her neurotic first-born. In many ways, it’s great. Livvy is really easy to love and does all of the outgoing, extroverted things that just weren’t me. In other ways, it’s pretty different. It means that mom has to be more sociable and do more parent driving and host more sleepovers, etc. In a lot of ways, mom got the best of both worlds, really.

And she has two kids who love each other a whole lot and who genuinely miss each other when they aren’t together. A firstborn and a baby that far apart makes for a great combination and they also help prove the birth order theory.

I have to go now. I miss my sister.

If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you. - A.A. Milne