Sharen

Sharen is my sister. She is a working mommy to 3beautiful kiddos.
With the exception of my mom and dad (who will of course have their own posts shortly) she is the one that I have known the longest.
She is two years older than me and doesn't hesitate to tell people that it's impossible for her to look like me because she came first.
Growing up our rooms were across the hall from each other, it was a long hallway. When we would get grounded to our rooms we devised a secret code using our Burger King Kids Meal decoder packets so that we could still communicate. We would toss a ball back and forth all while listening to be sure that Mom wasn't coming.

Sharen was for most of the time the only friend I needed. We would swim for hours and hours on end in the backyard. We played Barbies and board games and ran and ran and ran around the yard like insane children. As she got older and we both made friends of our own there was always overlap we would just hang out together (unless I was being annoying, as little sisters can often be). There is still overlapping and I think we've just agreed to share friends, it's much easier that way.
We would fight, for sure. There was one time I took the newspaper to my room and she wanted it. I locked my door and she banged and banged against it. It then got eerily silent. I was leaning against the door with my forehead, gasping for air when I heard it. The slow creaking of my bedroom window being opened. Sharen had dashed outside and was busting in through the door. Apparently you don't mess with Sharen and her news! We had "she's touching me!" fights in the car and all sorts of other fights. But mostly , we played together.

Growing up, and even now, our parents work very hard to ensure that Sharen and I get along and have a good relationship. Mom and Betty had such a hateful relationship growing up and to the point as adults that they no longer speak. Mom and Dad don't want that to happen to Sharen and I. We used to tease dad that he kept a notebook with two columns in it, making sure that to the penny things were evenly dealt out to Sharen and I.
As close as we were there was also a seperate thing going on. Sharen doesn't remember the ice cream sandwiches at the farm and how I didn't get them. She doesn't remember the differences between the way we were treated. I don't rememeber all those mysterious big sister things that she did when she started hanging out with her friends and dating. But those just weren't things that we talked about.

When I was 16 Sharen moved to Cincinnati to be a nanny. I got her car. Oh the sweet freedom of having a car at 16! When I was 17 I was allowed to drive to Cincinnati with Jamie Keegan to see Smashing Pumpkins in concert with Sharen. We stayed at Motel 6 because her nanny quarters weren't big enough (and we were a little rambuctious).
When I was 23 Sharen started campaigning to get me to move to Cincinnati. I didn't end up moving until just before I turned 25, which was right around the time that she found out she was pregnant with Matthew.

I moved in with her, Jeff, Kirsten and Shelby until Matthew came. It was so weird knowing that she was going to have a baby. Watching her nest and prepare, seeing these parenting instincts kick in that I didn't even know were there. It was funny and sometimes scary to watch the quick flip of emotions run through her as she moved closer and closer to mommyhood. We were together when she had an emotional break down about Meijer not having cinnamon pop tarts. I still can't really look at those pop tarts to this day without giggling.
When the day finally came for Matthew to be removed forcibly from the womb I hung out at the hospital and even stayed on the couch one night when Jeff had to work at his 2nd job. I saw more of her during labor and delivery than I was prepared for, but I'm still able to tease her about her walk to the shower when she was finally allowed to shower.
I hung out with her a lot after Matthew was born. I would work, go to school, and go to Sharen's. That was what I did and I wouldn't change it for anything.
Once I had just left her house only a few weeks after Matthew was born and was on the phone with John (on a HOUSE phone, it was 2004, the last time I had a house phone) when the operator broke into our call. Sharen had called the operator and asked them to inturrupt my call because of an emergency. I hung up with John and Sharen was connected. She needed vegetable oil. Matthew was asleep, she couldn't leave the house and needed to make Jeff's birthday cake. But she was out of vegetable oil. It was hard not to laugh, because she really was so upset. But I laugh now, because I drove her vegetable oil at 11pm.

I stood up for her at her wedding and got to hang out with her while we picked out centerpieces, dresses, and made flower holders for the ceremony chairs. I went with her to pick out her wedding dress and helped her put it on the day she married (finally!) Jeff. I cried while she danced with Dad for the Father-Daughter dance and danced the Cha Cha Slide with her in fancier dresses than either of us are usually spotted wearing. I ate White Castle with her on the curb of the hotel parking lot (Jeff and rest of the wedding party, Nicole and Stephanie were there too) after the reception was over.

I could go on and on, but I'm not sure anyone would read that much. The point is, I love that I live so close to my sister and that we are so close. I was just thinking the other day about all the other places I could have bought a house in the Cincinnati area, but that I was glad I bought one 5 minutes from my sisters house.

Like Alaina, Nicole, and Stephanie, even more so Sharen holds my history. She was there when I tacked a note to my bedroom door saying I didn't want to be alive anymore, she ripped it off the door and screamed and hollered through the house for mom and dad to tell them. She was there in Louie's at 1 in the morning when that guy was dancing up on me and wouldn't back down. She was the one that ripped him off my backside and threw him against the wall by his neck. She's the one that has always been there, since the time I was born.

Sharen teaches me ferocity. She loves feircly and definitely. There's not a question where you stand with her because it's so direct. In the years since I've moved to Cincinnati I've learned that directness even more and adopted it as my own. She wears her heart on her sleeve and cries at the drop of a Hallmark commercial. We'll be sitting at the table on family night and just talking when she will smile just so and you can tell she's about to cry.
Sometimes I feel like I can be cold, just making up my mind to not care about something. Just the other day Sharen told me that I can't pretend like *insert what we were talking about here* wouldn't bother me. She's teaching me still to realize that it's ok to be emotional, that it's ok to wear a little bit of your heart on your sleeve.

I just love that I get the opportunity to live this life with Sharen so close to me. That I get to watch her be a mom to her kids and a wife to Jeff. They all started coming to church awhile back and I have loved every minute of watching her connect with people, begin serving in Odyssea and inch closer and closer to a relationship with Jesus.
It's a credit to my parents that they worked so hard for Sharen and I to have a close relationship, but it's a credit to Sharen too. Because I have a tendancy to withdrawal and try to disconnect from relationships when they're to intense for me. But her ferocity kicks in and she is usually the first in line to bang on my door. When other people are shying away from engaging me directly because I'm spitting mad and cursing anyone I see she is the one that steps up into my face and gets me to calm down and come back out to play.
She's my sister. I love her.