Becoming a Big Sister

Becoming a Big Sister

I blame my parents for the misunderstanding. When they announced that they were pregnant with my little sister, they said, “We’re having a baby!” It was natural for me to assume that we all, myself included, were having a baby, and thus, the baby would be mine. I was overjoyed. A baby, for me? The next day, I went straight into my preschool to make the announcement: I was having a baby.

The ‘Big Sister’ gig was an important one, and I knew it. While parents were around to make the baby (though I still wasn’t entirely sure how they did that in the first place) and drive it places, the big sister’s duties were much more influential in an everyday sense. As a big sister, I would be in charge of playing with the baby all the time, reading to her, snuggling her, giving her baths, feeding her, teaching her how to tie her shoes. Honestly, my parents had it easy by comparison. They may have made her (???), it was obviously my job to raise her. Luckily, I’d had nearly five years of training with my baby dolls and stuffed animals. I was ready for this baby.

When it came time for my sister to be born, we hurried to the hospital. I couldn’t tell if it was late at night or early in the morning, but the air bit at my nose and cheeks as I went outside, and the sky was dark with just the tiniest glint of potential sunlight. As we piled into the car, my parents seemed anxious and overwhelmed (my mom was fully screaming, which I felt was excessive). I, on the other hand, was calm and still half-asleep, filled with giddiness about my new child. Of course, I didn’t know what labor consisted of -- and I wouldn’t for another several years.

As the sun rose and the day began, my parents let me know that I would be going to school like normal while the baby was being born. I was outraged. My parents weren’t going to work! I didn’t want to miss the moment my baby, I don’t know, landed (?) on this earth and took her first breaths. I put up a huge fuss with my parents, but they wouldn’t budge. “I want to see her being born!” I cried.

“No, you don’t,” my parents replied flatly.

“Yes, I do!!!” I let out. I was devastated. Nothing could possibly be worse than missing her birth. This was my baby, and I wasn’t going to be part of the most important moment of her life?

“How about this,” my dad began. “You have to go to school, but first I’ll take you to the hospital cafeteria and we can have a nice restaurant breakfast.”

A negotiation? Was he serious? Did he really think I would trade this basically spiritual moment for a stack of pancakes and an omelet?

“I’ll get you one of those pudding parfaits you love.” Oh man.

“With the whipped cream?” I asked, my eyes narrowed.

“Yep,” my dad replied. He had a deal.

Preschool was business as usual. We learned letters and shapes, I helped people tie their shoes, and it felt like the day went on forever. I regaled everyone with tales of getting up in the middle of the night because my mom had broken her water and we had to go to the hospital to fix it so they could get the baby out of her tummy. Very scientific stuff. Finally, after what I’m sure was 40 days and nights at that preschool, my aunts came to pick me up. My mother’s sisters, Emily and Beth, mean well, they really do. But they have this funny idea that just because they’re adults, they know what they’re doing and they’re in charge. I love my aunts, but they were sorely mistaken. They met me at the door of my school with bright, unassuming smiles stretched across their faces. “She’s here!” They announced.

“Yes! It’s me! Hello!” I always loved when people greeted me with joy.

“No,” my aunt Emily said, crouching down to me, “the baby is here.”

“She’s here?!” I started jumping up and down, looking all over for her. “Where?”

“She’s at the hospital,” Aunt Beth informed me.

“Oh my god, what happened??” I cried.

After reminding me that the hospital was where she was supposed to be, my aunts took the longest possible route from my preschool. This is what I mean. Had they listened to me and took Grand across to the other side of downtown, we would’ve been at the hospital in ten minutes. But because I’m “a child,” my aunts wouldn’t even hear what I had to say, so they drove us around an unfamiliar town for over half an hour. Then we had to park, which took 18 minutes. Then we had to wait in the elevator as they took someone named “Corpse” down to the basement. When we finally reached the new baby floor, I was exhausted and yet still exhilarated with joy at my newborn.

Aja was the tiniest human I had ever seen. She was human, though, I was almost sure of it. She had ten tiny toes, and ten tiny fingers, and such a small face I couldn’t comprehend it. Her whole body fit in my father’s hand. I was absolutely stunned. I reached out to grab her.

“No!” Everyone jumped to stop me.

“What? I want to hold her.”

“She’s too little for you to hold her right now,” my mother said, “We need to give her some time to get used to being out here.” This argument made sense at first, but as the evening went on, literally everyone else in the room got to hold my new baby. Everyone. My aunts took turns carrying her around the room, my dad rocked her in a rocking chair, my mom held her a lot, and the nurses -- who are not even related to her -- left the room with her sometimes. My mother’s ethos was waning. Then it got worse:

“All right, honey,” my mom said to me, after hours of watching other people hold my new child. “I think it’s time for you to go with your aunts.”

“Excuse me?” I started rapidly blinking. “Why can’t I stay here with you?”

“I need to get some rest, sweetheart. So does your dad. And so does Aja.”

“I think I know what my Aja needs,” I started, “and that is me, her big sister.”

“You can still be her big sister from home,” my dad said. “Right now you need to go with your aunts and help get her crib set up.” This was another example of my parents making a poor choice of words. What he should have said was, “now you need to go home and go to bed while your aunts put together Aja’s crib.” Unfortunately, what he said led me to believe I should stay up all night “helping” my aunts, which is exactly what I did.

The crib wasn’t hard to put together at all, but it took two hours to get the rocking chair into Aja’s new room. Apparently, it was wider than the doorframe. When I asked my aunts why they didn’t measure the doorway before they picked out the rocking chair, they politely sent me to bed.

The next day was Thanksgiving, and my freshly-completed family was supposed to make the two hour drive to Cedar Rapids to spend the holiday with our extended family. My parents, who were setting a dangerous pattern, insisted that I ride with my aunts and help them set up dinner, then my parents and my new baby would meet me there. I was not a fan of the exclusion, but I loved to plan a party, so I hit the road with my aunts and started folding tissue paper into (very abstract) centerpieces.

When the rest of my family arrived, I was thrilled to take on the job of introducing everyone to my new little sister. “This is Aja,” I told my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. “She is mine.” Everyone peered at the little cherub in my mother’s arms with pride and glee. I felt so proud. Everyone seemed to love my baby. Then something terrible happened.

My grandmother reached her hands out toward Aja, as if to try to hold her, and before I could explain that she was too little to be held, my mother just handed her over! And my grandmother cried and kissed Aja’s forehead and whatever, and then she just passed her along to the next relative. Soon my whole family was passing my child around like a joint outside the Colorado airport, with zero regard to her health or safety and certainly with no regard to me, who had not held her yet.

“HEY” I roared. My family turned to look at me. “Now look here. That is Aja, right there. That is my Aja. She just got here and I want to hold her, but they”-- I pointed matter-of-factly to my parents, “said she is too small. Now, is she too small to be held, or can I hold her?”

My family looked at me like I was the entertainment. They chuckled and smiled and called me cute. I was furious. I looked to my mother for support. She gave me an understanding smile, and went to pick up my sister from a distant cousin who had no business holding her anyway. Holding Aja, she approached me and said, “Sit down, and hold your arms up.”

I did as my mother said, sitting down on the couch and making a large circle with my arms as if someone was going to shoot a basket into my lap. It felt right. My mom gently lowered Aja into my arms, saying, “watch her head.”

“I know how to hold her,” I said. “I have several dolls, I’ve been training for this.”

Finally, I held the tiny girl in my arms. She wasn’t really opening her eyes yet, but she wrinkled her little nose and made itty bitty cooing sounds. She was so small and weird, I was overwhelmed with questions and love. This was the moment I’d been waiting for since my mom ate that basketball and ordered the baby (or whatever happened).

Looking at her, all cozy and warm in my arms, I knew that being a big sister would be the most important job I’d have, maybe ever. As time went on, that proved to be true. Being a big sister is a pretty great gig. I got to be Santa and the Tooth Fairy when I learned the truth about them but she hadn’t. I got to fill her stockings and go shopping and lie to her, just like my parents. I also got to teach her cool things, like how to maximize cleavage when dressing your Barbies, and how to turn your plate upside down in the trash if you didn’t finish eating all your meat. As she’s gotten older, I’ve exposed her to Broad City, taught her about sex, gotten her into the habit of eating late at night, and we’ve developed an incredibly close friendship. I suppose I didn’t really give her a choice, but it worked out for the best.

I decided seventeen years ago that Aja would be my best friend, and that I would take care of her and love her more than anyone in the whole world. I’ve always taken that job very seriously, especially at five when I believed I was her primary caregiver. Now that she’s grown up, I have this amazing best friend, and everything went exactly to plan. I guess the moral of this story is, don’t let adults stop you from holding babies. They’re not even smart enough to measure doors before they try to shove rocking chairs through them. Trust your gut, not your parents, and you’ll make a great big sister.