The responsible older sibling
"Okay," my mother says over the phone, "we thought you could call the hotel and book the rooms for the wedding." I have picked up a pen and started making notes when I suddenly realize what I'm doing. This isn't my wedding. This isn't my daughter's wedding. It's my sister's daughter's wedding. I live farther away from the wedding venue that anyone else in my family.
So why do I get the call to organize things?
It's a rhetorical question. I'm the oldest of four daughters and, to me at least, it seems as though I've been planning family events and supporting my younger sisters since I was a toddler.
All three of my siblings, at one time or another, have lived with me. When the husband of one sister lost his job, and their first baby was due in a couple of months, they moved in with me until he found work again. That baby was born in the hospital near my house and spent her first few weeks under my roof. When sister number two had a rough breakup with a boyfriend and nowhere to live, she arrived on my doorstep and stayed until she got back on her feet and found a new job and a new man. Sister number three was welcomed into my home for two years while she went to university.
There for the family, no matter what
And that baby who arrived while her parents were living with me? When she was 15 and going through a rough patch at home, she returned to live with me for an entire summer. I'm the one who arranges family get-togethers, the one who sits in the waiting room when one sister's husband is having surgery, and the one who drives for two hours to be at another sister's labour and birth. My parents are both in reasonably good health and still living at home, but I suspect I'll end up the point person when that changes.
It's not that my other sisters aren't caring people. They are. And I don't feel as though they are taking advantage of me; I'm just so used to this role that I'm quick to offer support and to insist that it's no trouble at all — even if it really is. When they need a little help, it seems that the first name they think of is mine.
But somehow the call to assist with organizing my niece's wedding made me think. (This niece, by the way, also lived with me for a couple of years while attending university. Yes, there is a pattern here.) How do we get into these roles? Why, long after we left the farm where we grew up, am I still the sister who makes the plans and helps out the little ones?
