Leaving (part 3): My Sister

Yesterday my sister came to town. Not to visit me you understand - she had a Camp America (organisation which recruits hapless English young-adults and ships them off to the states to be camp counsellors, supervising American youths for a summer...aka my worst nightmare) Reunion and needed to kill time before meeting up with her real friends. But regardless of being an afterthought to her weekend's plans, I was happy to see her.

I was five and a half when Jess was born. She came as a bit of a shock (to me, I'm pretty sure my parents planned her) - my quiet world was interrupted by this screaming mass of curly attitude - I had to move out of my newly-flowery-papered bedroom (my mum swears she told me I was choosing the paper for the new baby - I do not recall this) to accommodate the wailing monster and I decided the only remedy to this new noisy presence was to ignore it.

Only Jess isn't particularly easy to ignore.

We're not particularly similar, Jess and I. Apart from the curls, (any argument between the two of us is referred to as curly warfare by my friends) we couldn't be more different. While I intently read book after book as a child, with near religious zeal (my mum once hid my books because she was worried I wasn't playing enough. I found them), Jess was busy causing havoc and demanding the world's attention. Even now, everything she does / says is done at warp speed and the rest of us are left out of breath just trying to follow the conversation / her progress across the room.

So I wouldn't say she's mellowed with age. But our relationship has changed. While curly warfare certainly still takes place, we have grown to value and respect each other. I've given up ignoring her presence in my life and come to welcome it. The older sister reflex has kicked in and I feel a strangely fierce sense of protectiveness over her.

There is an element of irony here. Growing up, Jess was the confident one - on French family holidays, when mum and dad asked us to go get the bread (in my memory we went running off unsupervised into town and came back laden with loaves. I'm guessing I've edited this memory somewhat because this doesn't sound like a my-mum thing to permit), it was Jess who would march without fear into the boulangerie and request 'pain-au-chocolat' while I looked awkwardly at my ten-year-old feet in fear that someone would realise I couldn't actually speak french fluently.

Unsurprisingly, Jess was far cooler than me in school. Thankfully I left the year she started or she would only have further highlighted my cool-deficiency. She learnt to drive as soon as she turned 17 (I, if you recall, am still summoning the courage to book lessons) and is now studying a degree that will actually qualify her for an actual profession - none of your fluffy English Lit / International Relations crap for Jess. My little sister is far better equipped to tackle life than I will ever be, and yet I want to wrap her up in cotton wool and keep the big bad world away from her.

But, as she reminded me yesterday, I'm buggering off to America. And while my powers of protectiveness aren't particularly strong in the UK, at least I can check in on her, buy her lunch and quiz her on the various marauding men interested in her. From January I'll be limited to phone interrogations, and neither of us is particularly good on the phone.

Then I remember an episode in yesterday's visit which should serve as a reminder to me of her capable-ness and my ineptitude.

We'd stopped into the Tate Modern to check out the Turbine Hall and do a whistle stop tour of Surrealism. The current installation in the turbine hall is a great big black box, which visitors can walk into and experience something 'personal and collective, putting considerable trust in the organisation' and other such rubbish. Jess and I entered the darkness, clutching each other's arm and our handbags, for fear of art-loving pick-pockets. Giggling we stumbled through, gaining confidence as our eyes adjusted, walking into the gloom until... I smacked my face right into the back wall, while Jess laughed her head off.

Jess of course, like any other thinking person, had had her hand in front of her face as she walked, so stopped before slamming into the wall. Jess was sensible and prepared. I however was not.

Thinking about it, I don't think I need to worry about Jess at all. While she runs rather than walks through life, at least she's doing so with her hand out in front of her. I do however think she should maybe be worrying about me. If we were to think of the big black box as a life-metaphor, I've gone walking into the unknown and ended up with a sore forehead. Hmmmm. Let's hope this isn't an omen.