Make sure to put some extra logs on the campfire for me this weekend

Sorry my posts are so long, I will try to make them shorter. This is a long one too though so get your popcorn...

I don’t think I’ve told any of you about my sister. My sister is 5 years younger than I am. She’s one of those people who used to feel entitled to everything, like the world owed her something. This is how she spent the latter part of her teenage years, mad at the world and know-it-all, typical teenager, I guess. She even threw a snit and ran away from home just before my wedding causing me to rush and ask my cousin to stand in for her. In short, she was a real asshole.

Fast-forward a couple years and she’s still not living at home but is slowly on the path to adulthood. She has an OK job and is still living with abusive boyfriend #1 but that’s on the way out. She breaks up with boyfriend #1 and starts dating a boy who we’ll call baby daddy-in-law (he is my sister’s baby daddy so I figure that makes him my sister’s baby daddy-in-law). They are together all of 2 months before she calls to tell me that she’s pregnant. This wonderful news comes right around the time when I’d just been laid off and at that point we’d been trying to conceive for 1 ½ years. I’m livid and all “why not me.” I don’t tell her that because I want to be supportive because until this point she’s been a general screw-up in life. I want her to know that she can come to me with any problems especially now since she’s pg. I’ve always wanted to have a good relationship with my sister, but it was difficult because there’s a pretty big age difference between us and our general attitudes are completely different. She always thought I was a goodie-two-shoes and she never took responsibility for anything. We were just different.

So now she’s pregnant and it’s heartbreaking for me. I didn’t talk to her much during the pregnancy, took some “me” time and tried to be a grown up. My mom wanted some help to throw a shower for her in July seeing as my sister was due in September. I swallowed my bitterness, washed it down with a nice shot of vodka (who am I kidding, several shots), and said bring on the baby bottle favors. So it was during the shower preparation that I found out I was pregnant. I was thrilled and immediately told my mom and husband’s mom and a few close friends. I wanted to wait to tell my sister till after her shower so she wouldn’t slip up and say anything in front of our friends and family at the shower. So I whispered it in her ear as we were leaving and most of the guests had gone. I was thrilled and thought finally that the universe was working in my favor.

We found out August 6, 2004 that our baby didn’t have a heartbeat but it had grown to the eight weeks it should’ve been. Of course I opted for a natural miscarriage and don’t know the cause. Now it was even harder to talk to my sister because she was in her 36th week of pregnancy. Once again, I had to swallow my bitterness and be an adult when all I wanted to do was roll around on the floor kicking my feet screaming why.

My nephew came in to this world September 7, 2004 and my sister’s life has been changed ever since. Seeing her in the hospital with him was like a knife in my heart. That should be me in the hospital bed with the new baby, the first grandbaby. It’s not fair.

He was an angel though. Never even made a peep when we were there. His perfection would be even more evident as time went on.

Husband had a really hard time at the hospital. He never appeared to be direly upset during the miscarriage. Don’t get me wrong, he was sad and grieved with me, but differently. He was visibly upset at the hospital and it made me even more sad and the fresh scab was picked and my heart started bleeding again.

So all this is the history to tell you why I’ll need the campfire to be extra warm for me this weekend. My nephew is being baptized Sunday and I’m the godmother. I made a promise to myself not long ago that I would no longer put a happy face on to allay everyone’s concerns. I decided that I would be a WYSIWIG gal and that was that. This weekend, however, I have to break the promise to myself, I have to pull the happy face out of the closet and iron it. I’ve got to be the good big sister and godmother this weekend. I love my nephew immensely. He is the best and cutest baby in the whole wide world. I want one too. I hope mine will be as perfect as he is.

My sister’s life is greatly improved and she appears to be on the right track now. She has realized what a screw up she was and has made peace with her old self. She is a wonderful mother and I thank God everyday that her baby came in to her life. If he hadn’t, who knows where she’d be now.