I Look Like My Sister
I look like my sister. We’re not identical, mind you; if we stand side by side, you’ll be able to tell us apart. Elaine is two inches taller, for one thing. My hair is more blonde and less thick. She is far less freckled, and my skin is paler. She has the nose I wish I had. But we look enough alike to confuse friends, neighbors, and occasionally family.
When she visited me last spring, several neighbors mistook her for me. One friend even confronted me: “I saw you in Albertsons on Tuesday. You walked past me like you didn’t even know me!” And the same thing happens when I venture into her world. When I went to her house on the Fourth of July, one of her son’s friends came over. He saw me in the driveway. “Hey, Sister Wagner!” he called. I didn’t correct him; I just waved in return. Then he went around the corner and knocked at the front door. He did a double take when my sister answered. “But I just saw you,” he said. Then he caught sight of me coming in the back door. “Ohhhhh,” he said, pointing at me, “I thought I was going nuts.” And really, from the neighbors’ viewpoint, it’s understandable. But it’s even more amusing when people who should know better get it wrong.
On a frantic Sunday morning before church in my parents’ ward, my brother-in-law plunked his two-year-old son in my lap and said, “Honey, I’m going to go and try to find his other shoe. Will you get his clothes on, please?” Despite my need to dress my own children, I smiled and said, “Sure, honey.” He walked back downstairs without realizing his mistake. In fact, he never realized it. He still denies that it ever happened. When Elaine and I confronted him about it after church, he still didn’t believe us. He’s opted for willful blindness on this matter.
My husband’s subsequent mix-up with my sister, however, forced him to recognize his error. Approaching the kitchen, he thought he saw me leaning across the counter. He started to give “me” a playful slap on the rear. Two inches from impact, Elaine turned around and Griffin stopped his hand in midair. At that kind of distance, there could be no mistake. Griffin had to take it like a man, apologize, and admit that he couldn’t tell his wife’s behind from his sister-in-law’s at point-blank range.
At this point, I should let you in on the secret: We’re not twins. Elaine is seven years older than I am. Seven years may not sound like much, but it’s a big difference in life experience. She was seven when I was born. I was fourteen when she gave birth to her first baby. And no one thought we looked alike then. Growing up in Idaho, no one (not our parents or our other sister) so much as hinted that we looked similar. In fact, it’s only been in the last five years that people have mistaken us. Which begs the question, why? Why have we started to look more alike as we’ve gotten older? Why at thirty and thirty-seven are we suddenly capable of the kind of tricks that Hayley Mills played in The Parent Trap?
I don’t have any scientific evidence, but I can tell you my theory. While genes clearly play a part, I think it has to do with our lives becoming more similar through the choices we’ve made. I have always wanted to catch up to her, and I have always cursed that I was running behind. She went to BYU first. She got married first. She had children first. She received her master’s degree first. When I received mine, right after having my first baby, she called me. “Hey, Lisa,” she said, “I’m going to start my doctorate.” I longed to strangle her with a phone cord. Instead, I settled for mentally hexing her as I stammered encouragement. Then she started laughing, “I was just kidding.” She knew that even as I talked to her, I would be mentally planning how to incorporate my new baby into a PhD program of my own.
In trying to catch up to my sister, I’ve taken a similar path, although there are significant differences in the details. Her degrees are in mathematics (super yuck) and mine are in English. She has four sons with various shades of rainbow hair color (fiery red, strawberry blond, nut brown, and ultra-fiery red) and one sandy-haired daughter who laments her lack of sisters. I have two tiny towheaded daughters and am desperately afraid of having boys. She married a tall, easy-going pharmaceutical rep from Reno. I married a short, uptight civil engineer from Washington State. There are also differences in our talents and abilities. She plays the flute, draws, and paints, in addition to writing poetry and prose. I pretty much just write. Well, that’s my most traditional talent. I can also balance a spoon on the end of my nose for hours. She’s multi-talented. Me, not so much. And I do envy that of her. How did she wind up with both the math gene from our dad and the word gene from our mom? All my dad’s genes bequeathed to me was my big feet (and my spoon-balancing nose).
But here’s what I mean about our lives becoming similar. When I was a teenager, I watched her struggle. The details of those struggles were peripheral to my self-absorbed life; but still, I remember. I was vaguely aware that she and Tom endured newlywed poverty. I visited her in the tiny basement apartment at BYU. I rode with them in their car, Brown Beauty, a 1980-something Pontiac Bonneville without air conditioning that would spontaneously erupt into fits of honking. And after her first two children were born, Elaine moved back home while Tom started a new job in Nevada. I watched her (without really comprehending) go through postpartum depression. My sixteen-year-old world centered around dance practice and the high school social scene. But I do remember the day that I came home after school to find two-year-old Drew with a green Magic Marker sitting in a ring of bologna. He was contentedly drawing on each piece, oblivious to the screams of his baby sister down the hall. I went into her room. The baby was squalling in the crib, and Elaine was sitting in the closet, the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes. She didn’t say anything. I just looked at her, picked up the baby, and went into the front room with Drew and the bologna. By the time Mom came home, Elaine seemed fine. At that time, I didn’t think I shared anything in common with my sister. I watched her give up what I thought were the most important things in life: recognition, prosperity, and applause. And all for what? Screaming kids who colored on lunch meat? No, thank you. I remember telling her that I liked the cats better than her kids. I didn’t think I was like my sister.
But I would become like her. As I forged through high school and college and into adulthood, I was faced with some of the same dilemmas that she had faced: How would being valedictorian prepare me for a life filled with baby poop? How could I continue to care for my growing family and finish my education? How could we afford for me to quit my full-time job and stay home with the baby? Would I go insane staying home with a baby?
I found out too, that her choices were strong and selfless choices—choices that I value now, choices that I have made myself. I have gone through financial despair with my husband. I’ve lived in tiny apartments wherein you decorate the bathroom in green to camouflage the mold. I’ve turned down important jobs to stay home with my children. And one day after my Sasha was born, I locked myself in the bathroom, away from my bewildered three-year-old, away from the screaming baby, and I sat in the tub, my face in my hands, and cried.
Elaine talked me through those episodes. She watched me weather familiar storms. And in those times, what I held on to was the fact that I knew she had not gone under, and so I wouldn’t either. She listened to me with an empathy that I certainly never had for her. However, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. She isn’t a saint. When I was pregnant, I vowed I would never allow anyone to photograph me. She snapped the only picture in existence of me when I was the size and shape of a planet. When I saw the photo and remarked on her cruelty, she first pointed out that I looked more like an Easter egg than a planet (I was wearing lavender), and then she claimed that when she was pregnant I had once compared the roundness of her expanding belly to the hood of the VW Bug. In her mind, I fully deserved it.
But all teasing and sibling drama aside, I love that I look like my sister. Maybe it’s just the genes, but I like to think that I’ve grown to look like her as I’ve made some of the same choices she has. She trailblazed for me, and my choices have validated hers—and I love that. When she receives a compliment, so do I. One little girl in Elaine’s Primary class told her that in her imagination, the Veela from Harry Potter looked just like Elaine. I was as flattered as she was, because we’d never been told we look like anyone else before. But really, I’d rather be told I look like Elaine than any movie star, celebrity, or even a fictional creature known for beauty. And I think she likes it as much as I do. She wants to send me to her twenty-year reunion. But most of all, I like it because I can look into my sister’s face and see that she is beautiful, and so, by association, I must be beautiful too.
I think that, in some odd way, as I have gotten older, she has gotten younger, and the gap has narrowed, almost disappearing. I look at her now, and she doesn’t seem to be quite the same person that she was when I was in high school. She laughs more and worries less. I, in the frantic stage of young motherhood, seem to worry more and laugh less. I see her in her home on the hill in Rexburg with the view of the newly built temple. I see her interact with her strong and intelligent teenage sons and her sassy and compassionate daughter, and I see that she is happy. And I hope that when I look into her face, I see my future as well. It’s like looking into a fortune-teller’s mirror. By her familiar features, she proves to me that everything will be okay; that I will survive the trials I face now; that I will achieve the happiness that I see in her, because she is so much like me. And so when her sons call me “Mom,” and my daughters run to her, crying for their mommy, we both answer and don’t correct them.
Lisa received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from BYU, where she still teaches honors writing classes. She lives in Orem with her husband and two daughters. By day, she makes grilled cheese sandwiches, dances in the kitchen, and watches Little Einstein videos. By night, she grades papers, writes short stories, and dreams of writing a novel.
