More evidence for this post: My sister was bugging me via Twitter to post, telling me that it’s been too long. So, I gave in. See? Things haven’t changed at all!

I always seem to end up in the company of eldest children. This seems to have put in place at my birth, because I grew up in a family of eldest children. Both of my parents are eldest children—my father, the oldest of 4, and my mother, the oldest of 3. Even my siblings are eldest children, though I suppose technically my sister is by 6 minutes. The facts being what they are, no one in my family can relate to being the youngest.

I know, I know. Being the oldest stinks. You had all the attention and then had to share it. You were the guinea pig for fascist parents who then, seemingly overnight, turned into pushovers when your younger sibling reached that same age or stage. One man’s unfair is another man’s reparations. (Except you actually wound up with the monetary reparations. You know, when you got more financial aid for college because we existed. Hi, Ben and Sarah!)

Prior to a few years ago, I was familiar with maybe a handful of Disney movies, and that’s including the ones that came out during my lifetime. Being the youngest, I got about as much say as the remote did in what was watched. My siblings were over that stage by the time I was old enough to enjoy it, and neither of my parents were particularly eager to watch mindless, unassertive princesses live happily ever after again. So, instead of growing up watching Snow White get her prince and Bambi’s mom getting shot, I grew up watching Keanu Reeves prevent a bus from blowing up and Tim Curry ruin my life because Stephen King was given a contract instead of a straitjacket.

While frequently putting me in an awkward position in conversations, this never proved to be detrimental in any tangible way until senior year of high school. We were given an assignment that required us to identify allusions to various fairy tales in a story. I had to confess to my teacher that I wasn’t familiar with many of them. She didn’t believe me at first, but once she realized that I was telling the truth, she told me to work with a friend. As it turned out, working with a friend ended up translating into “copy your friend’s answers” because other than references to The Little Mermaid I was pretty much up the creek without a paddle. When resentful indignation hit, I went to my father and informed him that I had to cheat on an assignment because I wasn’t exposed to enough fairy tales as a child. (Okay, so my teacher knew about it, so it was authorized cheating, but throwing an accusation like that at your father lacks a certain pizzazz when you tell him that your teacher okayed it.) Rather than getting the compunctious apology I had imagined, my father responded with, “Yeah, well, I wish I had. Maybe you’d do more work around the house and give me less lip.” At a loss for words, but always ready with a response anyway, I unthinkingly blurted, “Yeah, maybe I would!”

Being the youngest, your greatest blessing and your greatest curse is your cuteness. I don’t know if this is true for age gaps smaller than my siblings’ and mine, but I found that cuteness worked. You see, I had the pout and the hug at the ready, and I fully utilized both to get my way. When I was young, I didn’t grasp the possibilities, usually focusing on getting extra cookies or extra strawberries or staying up for an extra half hour. When I was older, I wasn’t cute. Unfortunately for me, my siblings recognized this early on, and they figured out how to use it to their benefit. I became their secret weapon, and looking back, I’m simultaneously appalled and impressed at how effectively they manipulated me. Whenever they wanted something, they sent in the cute one. My parents knew what they were doing, but so cute was I that it was impossible to refuse. Don’t get me wrong, my siblings always rewarded me for my efforts, but back then all the reward I needed was a hug and a kiss, and I was happy as a clam—a happy chump of a clam.

My siblings weren’t the only ones who manipulated me. My parents did, too. You see, my sister, she’s not a morning person. Actually, she’s just not a waking person. Now, you’re usually fine if you talk to her after about 10, but when she was a teenager, you couldn’t talk to her prior to 3 pm without getting your head ripped off. Whenever we had a function to go to as a family, I somehow always got bamboozled by my parents into volunteering to go into the bear’s cave and wake her up. “Rah Rah,” I’d say while gently rubbing her arm, “Time to wake up!” I’d give her a hug and a kiss while I continued to try to rub her arm to wake her up. Geeeentle, geeeeentle, sweet as pie. Then her eyes would open into a glare and the inevitable “GO AWAY” would be barked out. I was either stock-piled on stubbornness or back-ordered on intelligence as a kid, because not only did I keep at it, usually resulting in a kick to the spleen, but I consistently wound up agreeing to be the family sacrifice when it came time to wake up my sister. You’d think she’d have been more grateful that I didn’t choose to wake her up by urinating on her.

One theme that consistently appears throughout nearly every story of my childhood is, “Girl can be talked into anything.” I can’t begin to count the number of times I was talked into something by my siblings that I would have never done if they hadn’t made it sound like an appealing proposition. Prank the other sibling, sure to result in a pummeling? Okay! Hop into a sleeping bag so one of them can see if they can carry me all the way up the stairs without dropping me? Sure! Putting on ridiculous clothes and posing like an idiot? Perfect! Hop into the dryer and let them shut me in? Sounds like a spinning good time. I’d like to think that those years are behind me, but then my sister had a baby, and in a moment of introspection, whereupon I recalled the many instances of singing and dancing like an idiot and imitating animals and otherwise acting like a drunken fool, I realized that not much has changed. Just the who. Life really has come full cycle. Here’s hoping they at least cleaned out the lint trap.

I actually wrote this yesterday, and I was trying to post it, but my battery died; you see, my room is a frozen tundra, and since my room is a frozen tundra, I was reluctant to leave the warmth of my electric blanket to go fetch the charger so that I could post this.  So I went to sleep instead.  (In case that’s not clear, their birthday was yesterday, not today.)

When I was a little girl rocking blond pigtails, I remember thinking that I had the best big brother and sister on the planet. I also remember thinking that two cooler people couldn’t possibly exist. They were the two most prominent figures in my life, and I adored them.

I’m sure a lot of people can say that about their siblings, but I imagine most people don’t quite grasp just how much weight that statement carries when I say it. I largely brought myself up, but I was only capable of doing so with their help. Everything I am, everything I’ve done would not have been possible without Benjamin and Sarah. Both of them have at some point been my sibling, my parent, my best friend, my teacher, and my protector—sometimes all at once.

I’ve always suffered from horrible nightmares, but when I was a little girl, I didn’t cope well with them. I was afraid to sleep alone. I was passed around to each member of my immediate family over the years, sleeping alongside each of them. It was the only way I could manage to get through the night. I was a violent sleeper. I tossed, I turned, I kicked. My brother and sister still let me sleep in their beds with them. Okay, there was that one time when I peed all over my sister in her sleep, and she wasn’t too keen on letting me sleep with her anymore, but I forgive her for that. I also used to sleepwalk. (Okay, I still sometimes do.) My brother and sister would keep an eye out for me when they stayed up late doing schoolwork, and when I’d emerge sleepwalking, they’d gently wake me up and bring me back to my bed. I remember one particular occasion when my sister put my head over steam to help wake me up calmly so I wouldn’t jolt into consciousness afraid. She understood me. They often had to calm me down in the middle of the night after particularly bad nightmares. They never complained about it, at least to me. They took care of me, their baby sister, out of love.

My brother taught me how to play basketball. He taught me how to throw a football. He taught me how to play chess, and he introduced me to poetry. He’s the reason I love poetry so much, the reason why I write even though I’m not particularly talented.

My sister played Barbies with me. She played with LEGO bricks with me, building house plans out of the bricks. She played Polly Pocket with me. She did all of this even when she herself was well beyond the age of being interested in these things. Even though she wanted to play house, she’d always indulge my impulses to play out far more wild and adventurous scenarios. She taught me a lot about being a girl when no one else did, but she did so in a way that still made me feel comfortable being the feminine and yet less than girly female that I am. One year, closing in on Christmas, there was a tornado scare; she took me into the bathroom, covered the floor in pillows, wrapped me up in a blanket, and cuddled me while reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever aloud to distract me from my fear. She’s also taught me how to cook some really delicious things that I couldn’t otherwise possibly have pulled off, because I am not talented in the culinary department the way she is.

They taught me to love, and to love fiercely. They also taught me anger, but more importantly, controlling that anger. That in turn taught me how to forgive, to understand, and to give the benefit of the doubt. Also to control my impulses by instead channeling them into a cleverly concealed plan of revenge with relatively low risk. Kidding. Mostly. I learned first hand from them that, yes, people you love will hurt you, but that also hurts them—I learned to remind myself that they usually weren’t intentionally out to hurt my feelings.

They both have always, always, always supported my writing. I’ve wanted to write since I was five. Neither of them have ever said a disparaging word about anything I’ve written. They’ve praised my poetry since I began writing when I was eleven. When I was in fifth grade, we were to write a ten-page story around Christmastime. I was a bit overzealous, and my story wound up going well past twenty pages. My teacher focused on that rather than my writing. I remember being upset, because I had put a lot of effort into the story, and it needed to go past ten pages. My brother and sister both read it and told me that it was very good for my age, and they told me that my teacher just couldn’t see my talent because it resulted in more work for her. I cannot tell you how much that pushed me to continue writing, regardless of how true or false their comments were. To this day, my sister loves to read anything I write. While she is undoubtedly the most biased reader I have, it still warms my heart to know that she gets excited to read my writing, even when it sucks. (I personally like to think I’m just prepping her for Alice’s future art projects.)

Every success I’ve had, they’ve been there to cheer me on. When I got into BU, they both bragged to their friends and colleagues. When I graduated early from BU, they bragged to everyone they knew. When I got into grad school, they praised me from the hilltops. After I graduated, my brother indulged me enough to make a “Master and Commander” sign to hold up at the airport when I got into town.

When I proclaimed my decision to become Catholic, they supported me. The night I was baptized, my brother called me beforehand and told me how proud he was of me for taking that step and for being so staunch in my faith. He told me he admired me for that. That was huge coming from him. He even bought me a very lovely cross for the occasion (that, of course, matched my dress—he picked it out and mailed it to me). They were proud of me, even though they don’t believe exactly the same things I do.

I’d been having a rough time, and been going through a lot of weird things. I talked to my sister about things that I don’t talk to people about. She let me rant. She let me talk. I sounded ridiculous and crazy, and she never judged. She was supportive and understanding—accepting. She knew how to ease my self-consciousness.

They’ve both helped me out in times of crisis. They’ve both given me their shoulders. And they always will.

And today they turned thirty.

They’re my sun and my moon—two constants that I often take for granted, but without which my days would lose coherency and meaning. And I love them, so very much.

Oh, and that part about two cooler people existing? Scratch that—they’re huge dorks. I’ve come to realize that it’s genetic.

Happy birthday, Ben and Sarah. Without you, I’d be so much less than I am.