Episode 1: Under a rock

It took Mom 4 years to get pregnant with my big sister, Debra, but only about 9 months after Debra’s birth to get pregnant with me. There are pluses and minuses that arise from having your children that close together. On the plus side, you get all the diaper years over with more quickly and—in Mom’s case—you can get back to full-time work sooner. On the minus side, you are changing diapers for several years in a row and your children may be more contentious than loving with each other.

Debra had a true love/hate relationship with me when I was born. One morning, Mom came into my room and panicked when she didn’t see me in my crib. I was completely buried under piles of stuffed animals that Debra claimed she was “sharing with the baby”. Yeah. Right. Another time, when Mom was trying to feed me, Debra, feeling jealous and knowing Mom couldn’t get up to chase her, pulled her little pants down and peed into the heat vent while defiantly staring Mom straight in the eyes.

As soon as I was old enough to understand her, Debra started saying certain things to me on a regular basis with an ominous voice and a sneer on her face such as, “You know, you don’t look like any of us” or “We have hardly any pictures of you, but we have lots of pictures of me.” She would then follow up with, “It’s because we found you under a rock!” Since I actually didn’t look like my sister and she was so convincing (she later got a BA in Drama, just so you know I wasn’t just stupid), I began to believe her.

When I started kindergarten and it was time for parent conferences, Mom arrived, sat down, and the first thing Miss Rupp said to her was, “Mrs. Phillips, I have to say, it’s so nice that you and Mr. Phillips adopted Danna!” Mom, taken aback, responded, “ADOPTED? We didn’t adopt Danna! I gave birth to her!” Once she got home, she set me straight on the subject and also found out why I believed I was adopted. Debra got a good scolding out of it, but she simply shrugged it off without so much as an apology to me.

That’s a big sister for you. If they can get you, they will. Don’t worry, I got her back over the years, many times over.