My Sister, the Sun & Me, the Moon

We could never be in the sky at the same time

There is a line in Alice Hoffman’s book Practical Magic about the two heroines of the story, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens. Something about how witch sisters never look alike, how they are total opposites. The girls, in their childhood, are called by others “Night” and “Day,” which they did not like, though it’s revealed that they understood something about themselves from a very early age — “that the moon is always jealous of the heat of day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.”

My sister and I, who always considered ourselves very close until she got married in 2005, used to argue, in our early twenties, about which Owens sister each of us was. I told her I wouldn’t mind being Gillian — she was so free and exciting. “But let’s face it,” I said. “She’s beautiful and everyone’s in love with her and she’s always the center of attention… That’s you. So I guess I’ll be Sally.”

“Yeah, but…I’m gonna have a big family someday and I was born to be a wife and mother…so I’m kinda Sally, too,” she said, in all seriousness. “I’m really both of them.” She smiled, just like Gillian. “You can be Aunt Jet, though.”

My sister was born two years after me. Though we looked alike on the outside — both blonde and blue-eyed California girls — we were, indeed, opposites on the inside. I was a July baby, born under a sign ruled by the moon, and she was an August baby, born under a sign ruled by the sun.

And she most definitely was the sun — bigger than anything around us, blindingly bright, beautiful, warm, and used to every single thing in the universe revolving around her.

It was hard to keep up with her. She maintained a 4.0 GPA without effort while I worked my ass off for my 3.8. She could eat everything in sight and never gain a pound while I was constantly watching what I ate because even looking at a cookie seemed to make my stomach big and bloated. And she was always the most popular girl at school, with guys literally lined up in a queue to be her boyfriend, while I was the nerdy, chubby girl on the yearbook staff, at whom the boys laughed.

At every family gathering, she was all anyone wanted to talk about. Did you see what Tee’s wearing? Can you believe how skinny and tall she is? Did you hear she got another academic award at school? Did you hear she has a new boyfriend? Can you believe how popular she is?

I never felt like anybody noticed me. I worked so hard just to stay in step right behind her so I wouldn’t fall too far off the radar, but even then, nobody seemed to see me.

While living in Santa Fe, at 25, I met someone who would become a lifelong sister-friend. During one of our marathon chats, Isa, a strict Catholic, confessed to me that she had gotten pregnant at 19 and had a miscarriage — something she had never told her family.

I couldn’t believe it. The same thing had happened to me, and I immediately shared my story. It felt so good to finally be able to tell my secret. But I also felt guilty. My mom and sister were the most important people in my life. It felt wrong to continue to keep that secret, so I decided to tell my sister first, hoping she would give me the courage to tell our mother. Too scared to face revealing this in a phone call, I emailed her the story of what had happened and sent it, feeling hopeful and relieved.

I was shocked when she sent back a scathing response. She said she couldn’t believe I had dropped a bomb like that on her after all those years. She said I was the most selfish person she had ever known. She said she wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in a relationship and therefore, would never speak of the subject again.

I was mortified by her words and sent back a two-page apology begging her to forgive me, going on and on about what a horrible person and sister I had been.

Just as promised, she did not respond and we never spoke of my pregnancy again.

In fact, I never spoke of it at all, to anyone, until I wrote about here, almost twenty years later.

Things really changed when my sister met her future husband. Their relationship was all-consuming, removing them into another world of their own which, when they occasionally emerged, made everything seem so exciting and surreal, like having Brangelina, circa 2006, appear unexpectedly at a party.

I didn’t want to lose my connection with my sister, so I did whatever it took to stay close.

I planned her wedding shower with intricately-designed handmade cards and party favors that took me weeks to make. My mother and I worked almost every day making her wedding invitations, the dried flower arrangements, the wall décor.

I didn’t mind that she missed my college graduation — she was eight months pregnant, after all, and lived 150 miles away by then. After Ben was born, I’d drive out to stay with her every weekend that I could spare in order to help with the baby. (Not that she needed the help — admittedly, I just wanted to spend time with Ben.) I drove her around when her husband was on work trips. I helped with the baby announcements.

I wanted so much to be a good sister.

When I completed grad school, though, I was dismayed that Tegan, four months pregnant with her second child, bitterly complained during my research symposium. I had invited her there because the graduation ceremony was out of town and I knew she wouldn’t want to travel while pregnant, and I wanted her to share in my celebration. But she said her sciatica was overwhelmingly painful, she hadn’t slept, her husband had been on a long work trip, and could I please, she said, just leave her alone so she could sit on the bench in the corner of the room until the event was over?

Once, in our early thirties, after my sister had had three of her six babies and I was still struggling with my commitment-phobic partner, I said, “Promise me we’ll be Sally and Gillian. Promise me we’ll grow old together, these two old biddies with all these cats. Promise we’ll die on the same day.”

She laughed, recognizing the quote from the movie when the sisters make a blood pact to stick together, but her response was a noncommittal, “Sure.”

I was always waiting for her to come back to me. People told me to be patient, to give her lots of space. She’s planning her wedding, they said, at first. She’s dealing with so much. Then it was, She’s pregnant. She’s got a lot on her plate. Then it was, She has a baby. Can you imagine how busy she is right now?

I’ve heard that for the past fifteen years. She’s always been pregnant, or breastfeeding, or dealing with toddlers, or sick children, or…

I always kinda felt like I was barely hanging on to her to begin with, but since she met her husband, I don’t think she’s noticed me or anything in my life. When my last partner left, and my dog died a few months later, and I lost my house a few months after that, I never once got a text, phone call, or email from my sister asking, “Are you okay?” or saying “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”

When she had an upsetting sonogram with her fifth pregnancy soon after, she became depressed, convinced she was going to lose the baby. I had a deep feeling that everything was going to be okay — that the baby was fine — and I wanted to share that as encouragement, but also not invalidate her fear and grief. I eventually figured out a way to cheer her up without disrespecting her feelings.

“I just wanted to tell you,” I said, sitting down next to her, “I am holding space for everything to be okay. I’ll be your optimism backup while you’re processing this.”

She looked at me slowly, as if I’d just told her her babies were ugly, and said, “You’ve never been pregnant so you can’t possibly know what this is like. Don’t even try to pretend like you understand.” Then she got up and walked away.

I was stunned, first by her anger and then by her statement that I’d never been pregnant. She was one of only two people in the world who knew that I had been — why would she pretend I hadn’t?

But I soon realized that she wasn’t being cruel by bending the facts.

She had honestly forgotten. Which felt even worse, somehow.

If you’ve read Practical Magic or seen the movie, then you know that Aunt Jet, sweet and cute as she is, is just a side character. She appears in the beginning and then again at the end.

The aunts are great, to be sure, and one could argue that they actually have a huge influence on the plotline of the story. But again, they’re just side characters.

I love my sister immensely, to this day, but I’ve always felt like a side character in her life. That seems impossible, considering the amount of time I have spent helping her, making things for her, planning parties for her, loving her kids.

Who dropped everything to come help when Ben got his finger stuck in a broken maraca? When Tegan came down with severe mastitis and needed to be taken to the ER where I remained by her side for six hours? When Baby Alex got sick (again and again and again) and wouldn’t stop crying unless someone held him at all times?

But I still feel like a side character. I always wanted her to plan a birthday party for me. I wanted her to come to the city council ceremonies where I was twice awarded for my volunteer work. I wanted her to come to my “I just bought a house all by myself” party and make a big deal out of what an accomplishment that was. I wanted her to come to my art show last year.

Not long ago, she sent me a link to a blog post about a woman who had gotten married in the woods in December, using snow and branches as decorations. The note with it said, “I can see you doing this someday. I can’t wait to help you plan it.”

It seemed like such an incongruous thing to say, looking at our history. It was sweet, I suppose, but I didn’t believe her. To be honest, I’m not even sure she would attend if I had a wedding.

And yet, I still just want the sister fantasy I have always dreamed of. I still want us to be Sally and Gillian, these two old biddies with all these cats. Two girls who grew up together and who die on the same day.

One sun, one moon — a complete cycle of day and night, with room enough for both.