Sister, Sister

I’ve never been much of a sleeper so I would get up super early to watch The Snorks.  Who got up early to watch The Snorks?!  She would wake up a little later and spent the next three to four hours glued to the TV with me.  Dungeons and Dragons, The Littles, CBS Storybreak...but how did we know that the cartoon session was over?  Kung Fu flicks, Godzilla movies, Tales from the Darkside (whose sick ass idea was it to schedule Tales from the Darkside after cartoons?) but it began with WWF wrestling.  I don’t know if she was into it, but she rode with me.  During commercial breaks, we would reenact the signature moves of Hulk Hogan, the Iron Sheik, the Junkyard Dog, and Jimmy Superfly Snukka.  Side note: wrestling was really racist.  Running back and forth across the living room like we’re bouncing off the ropes, body slams onto the couch cushions, and elbow drops on the bed—-She was always game to humor me.

My sister Cathy was the combination of being the girl and the baby in our household.  She was the third cutest baby ever.  My kids are tied for first.  (Asia actually looks just like my sister.)  All of us doted on Cathy.  It’s probably the one thing that we did unified as a family.  We had a dog then.  It attacked Cathy one day; she hadn’t even turned one yet.  My dad took the dog out to the desert and shot it.  It was one of the few things that my dad ever did to show that he cared.

My brother George was halfway through high school when my dad died.  Though not his fault, when he went to college, that put a little more on my plate.  I really didn’t see it as a burden.  It was just doing my part.  Cathy was my little sister and I needed to make sure that I protected her.  From wrestling, slap boxing, basketball in the front yard, and riding bikes to coloring and playing with dolls.  Just so you know, I wasn’t playing with dolls.  I was playing with action figures.  Jem and the Holograms vs GI Joe and the Transformers.  Never forget the Legos, can’t forget the Legos.

She was spunky; tough just like my mom.  She would shoot sass at my friends whenever they came over. There were times when I had to speak to her teachers because she was bullying the boys in class.  I would nod my head and assure them that I would take care of it.  Little did they know...

Me: “What happened?”

Her: “I didn’t like the way he was talking to me.”

Me: “Okay.  Don’t worry about it. Moms’ got you and I do too.  Keep doing that shit.”  (That’s not a typo.  Around our way, we say Moms.)

I made sure she was ready for school in the mornings.  Fights for bathroom time and wolfing down cereal...my mom or my brother would drive Cathy to school.  I would walk with my boys.  She and I walked home together once the last bell rang.  There was a Circle K on the way home, and if I had a spare dollar or some change, we would share some Now and Laters or Bazooka Joe gum.  (The comics were so corny but we couldn’t wait to read them.)  Once we got home, I made sure that she was set up with a snack and helped with any homework that she was assigned.  That was the rule in our house:  homework first. I’d do mine and race outside to play with my friends.  She was never far behind.

She’s always had my back—-Always.  Let me take that back.  Well there was this one time when my high school girlfriend and I were on a “break.”  (Don’t hate me but I hate Friends.) I had a girl in my room and my girlfriend decided that she wanted to show up.  No warning.  In the prelude leading to this train wreck, Cathy and I had the all too common brother-sister tiff.  Per usual, I was talking shit.  Cathy knew I had a girl in the room with me. I didn’t hear the doorbell. There was a knock on my bedroom door so naturally I assumed that it was Cathy.  Nope.  That was a top five wrong assumption.  It was my ex.  And under the covers, there was another girl in my bed.  “But we were on a break!”  Not my best moment...

Other than that one time, she always has had my back.  Cathy was with me when we moved to Korea and she was with me when we moved back to El Paso.  She was with me when I graduated from high school and she was with me when I almost flunked out of college.  She was with me for the birth of my two babies and she was there for the death of my marriage.  She’s never judged me.  There really hasn’t been a key moment in my life that she hasn’t shared with me.

I’m her big brother.  She actually calls me her big brother—-mind you she’s two inches taller than I am.  I feel like Kevin Hart standing next to her.  I call her Gigantor, she calls me shrimp, et cetera, et cetera.   She was a decorated honor student, a National Merit Finalist, and a multisport athlete excelling in volleyball.  I went to all of her games; always sat in the top corner of  the bleachers of the gym.  She usually had the jitters.  She would find me during the warmup and I would put my finger across my lip like a mustache to make her laugh.   (Her name is still on a couple of championship banners hanging in the rafters at our high school.)  She was a superstar.  Her teachers had to have been befuddled asking themselves, “Really?  Leigh is really your brother?!”   She is also one hell of an educator.  She was named teacher of the year in her district just a few years into the profession.

Obviously, I was never very fond of anyone that she dated.  Let me walk that back.  I was funky as hell to anyone that she dated.  My friends would amuse themselves and jump right in and play off me like that scene in Bad Boys 2 when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence punked the kid who was trying to take his daughter on a date.  She actually married a great guy and has two beautiful little girls.  Charlotte is something like Olive in Little Miss Sunshine and Carolynne is more like Eleven in Stranger Things: yin and yang—-pretty reminiscent of Cathy and me.  I have a blast being their bad uncle.  I really love seeing my sister’s reaction when I encourage them to do wild shit.  Cathy has been the best aunt that I could ever wish for my kids to have.  She has been instrumental in Asia’s upbringing.  She’s the best sister.

With the pandemic, this is the longest I’ve gone without seeing her.  Sometimes I wish we could go back to Saturday morning cartoons and running through the sprinkler in the front yard on hot summer days.  I miss her.