My Baby sister

19 years ago, and a few months, I was the baby in the family. It was all me.  I was the youngest, the last and in my opinion....the best of what my parents could produce. And then, at the age of 43 my mother has her last baby..and I am ousted to middle child position...which means I am now forgotten and lost and invisible.

The day Kathryn was born, well it was very early in the morning to be exact. I had fallen asleep waiting to hear the phone ring and so when it did, I jumped up and almost hit the ceiling of my room. Jen, the oldest sister and secure in that position, also answered the phone so both of us echoed the "Hello?..Dad? How is mom..how is the baby??"


"Good, they are both good"


"What is it?"


"Its a girl"


I still felt lost.  Ousted. At least my mother allowed me to help choose the name of my replacement sibling. I picked Kathleen at first but my mother felt that Kathleen Moore was to Irish a name for a girl with no Irish in her. So I settled for Kathryn. I named her after Catherine the Great, one of my favorite queens, and Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of Catherine Linton in Wuthering Heights because she was loving and good and everything her mother was not and she was going to make a success out of her life and follow her heart.  She married her love and they were happy. That is what I wanted for my Kathryn.

We arrived to the hospital on that dreary March morning. I had brought my mother red tulips because she loved tulips.  A grand gesture, I thought, of kindness and welcome coming from me to my rival.  I wanted to put a good foot forward, even though I hated being the middle child now.

And then I met my baby sister.  Baby Kathryn. She was dark, like a raisin and she had a ton of black hair. I remember thinking that she had a ton of black hair.  And then a crazy thing happened to me. I could no longer remember ever not knowing her. I couldn't remember a time when I didn't have a baby sister named Kathryn. She became our entire world, the whole family, including me. I fell in love with that little raisin in that flash of a second and now I can't believe she wasn't always been in our lives.

I love being the middle child now because it means that Kathryn is the baby and that's the way it's supposed to be.  It turns out that I've been waiting all my life to have a sister named Kathryn. I can't believe I survived so long without her.  She came just in the nick of time. And she is turning out to be everything I hoped she would be.

Now she is my inspiration and my muse.  She teaches me something every time we talk, whether its how to include a music file in an email, or how to be more patient and loving...or how to be fearless and raw and follow your heart.  She is strong and compassionate.  She is brave.  I always think of her as that tiny raisin lying in the hospital or that infant learning to crawl, or that teenager slipping on every piece of ice on the sidewalk while the three of us were in Maine until I thought I was going to lose her under a parked car... or I think of her as the adventurous girl that I saw set off by herself everyday we were in CA together, having adventures and exploring the city of San Francisco ..I thought of her as too young to be able to do that without me but she was fine..she drives everywhere on her own..almost like she doesn't need me anymore and that is a terrible feeling, because I very much need her and I would hate it if I was on a one way street in the needing department..but she is an adult now with talent and a voice. And now the greatest moments for me are when she shares her talent with me or when she shares her voice. I worry that because I live so far away, that I am going to miss something, some tiny bit of her...and I will be the loser if that happens. I don't want to miss a single moment.  I miss my sister Kathryn. (Now I'm gonna hear it from my sister Jen..Love you too Jen, miss you too!)

So here is to baby sisters everywhere, stealing the spotlight and changing lives. Thank you for coming along...nothing would be right without you. We middle children would be nothing without you to miss and worry about and be crushingly proud of.

XOXOXOXOX to you Kate.. I am seeing in me now the things you swear you saw yourself. I miss watching movies with you and playing Mario Kart too.  I miss you asking me or telling me or sharing with me.  I miss your light.  Don't stop shinning it because if you try to shine it very very bright I will feel it, even all the way down here. And I need you, my Kathryn.