Little Sister

Sisters.

At ages two and four Louisa and Ryann have become quite the playmates.  Liam is still often at school and Rory is still too young to join the fray.  As I type this Ryann is outside trying to learn how to roller-skate and Lou is helping her.

My sister and I once wore these dresses.  Now we bestow the honor of dressing like members of a polygamist cult down to the next generation.

I can’t help but flash back to my own sister and I when I watch the two of them.  For one, visually they are identical versions of us; Lou is the spitting image of my ginger headed sister and Ryann my mini-me, long brown hair and all.  My sister and I were three years apart, Ry and Lou just two.  It’s funny to watch Lou watch Ry.  She is always watching and copying her behavior.  Ryann has always had a penchant for books.  From an early age she would sleep with them, snuggled up with one as though it were a stuffed animal.  Now she is often found carrying around a chapter book she cannot read, stopping to thumb through the pages, appearing for all intents and purposes to be reading a book intended for a much older audience.  Lately I’ve noticed Lou has taken to the same behavior.  Yesterday I saw both girls playing side by side with two pink purses, two toy phones and two “chapter books.”  

I’ve also found Ry holding court while Lou attends to her like a lady in waiting.  They are content to play in imaginary worlds Ry creates.  If Lou is unintelligibly pleading for something with a panicked fervor I can usually figure out what she wants by looking to whatever Ry is doing at the moment.  Little sister wants what the big sister has.  Always.

It’s really funny to watch all this as a mom who was once the big sister.  I keep waiting for Ryann to get frustrated with the copycatting as I once was.  Every time I go in search for the other pink purse or toy phone I hold my breath expecting Ry to lash out against her sister’s need to do everything like her.  So far it doesn’t seem to bother her.

I’m also gaining some fresh insight into little siblings.  As the oldest I didn’t have anyone at home to copy and draw a self from.  Don’t get me wrong, I sought out a guide for how to be from my friends, looking to their actions and choices to copy and model a self (I still find myself doing this).  But I didn’t have that one person in my home who I could watch at all times.  When I look at Lou with her chapter books and toy phones I wonder if she really likes those things or if she just thinks she should like them because Ryann does.  Because I drew my “inspiration” from a plethora of people growing up I wonder if I was a little more free to choose things that aligned more with who I actually was.

My youngest brother talks about how growing up he assumed he was supposed to like sports because his older brother did.  Tim was his example of what it meant to be a boy and according to Tim boys play sports.  And so it wasn’t until Jack had participated in many, many years of rec sports before he realized he didn’t like it and he didn’t have to do it (and also, he might not be very good at it).

I think of this as I watch Lou watch Ry.  I wonder when she will find her own freedom to be who she was created to be apart from the example her older sister sets.  And I wonder how I can help guide her to this freedom.  Because she’s not the same as her big sister.  And I’d rather save her from years of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole if I can.

But I will enjoy these years of watching her imitate and copy.  Yesterday Ryann animatedly told me some nonsense story about something or other while Lou stood right next to her babbling her own story, imitating precisely Ryann’s tone and inflections.  I bounced my eye contact back and forth between the two of them, dying with laughter on the inside at the lengths Lou was going to mimic her big sister.  Ry may someday hate this copycat behavior, but, if she’s anything like me, when she is an adult she will begin to copy Lou, who, if she is anything like my sister, will develop her own cool sense of self that will definitely be worthy of imitation.