Thursday, August 14, 2014

sisters forever

Juniper's toddler chub has lengthened into the svelte body of a kid.  Lately, she inhabits an intense physicality: pounding, stomping, jumping, running, pulling, with ropey muscled legs.  I can hardly get her to sit down to draw or paint anymore.  She says she wants to be "an ice-seller" when she grows up (like Kristof and the mountain men in the opening scene of Frozen).  She stomps her feet singing, "Born of cold and winter air and mountain rain combining...."  She loads pillows, bags of compost, cardboard boxes, or firewood into a sled or wagon, pulls, stomps, sings, yells, "Beautiful!  Powerful!  Dangerous cold; Ice has a magic can't be controlled; Stronger than one!  Stronger than ten!  Stronger than a hundred men!  Ho!"  And off she goes.       
Then she hops in the sled or wagon and asks that I pretend to be the mule.  (I am a mama; I am always the mule.)
:: We are listening to the Frozen soundtrack, again.  Hazel is wearing a white cape and one sparkly plastic princess heel, lopsidedly clomping around the house, CLOP....CLOP....CLOP.   She disappears and it gets quiet.  Me: "Where's Hazel?"  Hazel appears from around the bend: "No.  I'm Elsa."  Lately, Hazel is either naked or wearing a cape, or wearing a cape naked with one plastic heel, and a crown.
  
^It's rare that we find *both* plastic heels.^
They are Elsa and Anna, or two Elsa's together.  They wear blue and white because those are "Elsa colors".  Though they dress as princesses, they want to grow up and open a business as Ice-Sellers, together as sisters.  Because they cannot imagine a day when they will be apart.
(They find it unimaginable and horrifying that Elsa and Anna sleep in separate rooms.)  
They share everything: books, toys, clothes, shoes, cups, food.  They share a room and sometimes a bed.  In their own beds, they sleep with no more than twelve inches between  their heads.  They play rescue, animal shelter, restaurant, Charlotte's Web (a.k.a "butcher"), dinosaurs, family, and race (J: "as fast as Lightening McQueen because he's my favorite").  
This swirl of togetherness is everything I could have hoped for.  This is it: the most important relationship I can cultivate, this sisterhood.  It is the relationship that will endure beyond all others.  For better or worse.  I am aiming for the best.  
My mom always says she got exactly what she wanted: a boy and a girl and she wanted the boy to be the oldest.  As for me, I wanted the pair.  Although I surely would have found irreplaceable joy in any combination, I wanted either brothers or sisters.  Not that brothers and sisters don't play together, but you know....  I played with barbie dolls and my brother blew them up with firecrackers.  
Lately I have seen some fledgling fist-fights.  We practice empathy, work through the anger, but in the end, the magic wand is one sister or the other offering a compromise.  They do it on their own, usually, and witnessing this selflessness for the sake of the whole makes my heart sing.  They always prefer to be together.  One minute they are hitting, the next minute Juniper is grasping Hazel's hands asking, "Hazel, you promise to be my sister forever?"



*This post was, in part, inspired by one of my favorite bloggers and this post.  

4 comments:

  1. every bit of this made me excited and nod and agree that nothing is more beautiful than these sisters we are raising. what blessings. xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. This. This post. I love it. Not having a sister, sisterhood is new to me and I love every square inch of it.
    I especially love Hazel's outfits of choice as of late.
    You're such a great writer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your girls are adorable!

    You know people often nudge me to have another baby because they assume i must feel the need for a girl after two boys. I have felt no such need. They are just the same. They share a bedroom, they are always near one another, they fight and then love each other over and over. I love watching their bond grow its so special x

    ReplyDelete

What say you? I want to hear it!