Duets

Do you have a sister?  I do.  My husband I don’t plan to have any more children, and we feel fortunate to have one of each, a boy and a girl.  When you are planning a two-child family, it’s nice when that balance occurs.

But…

There is no relationship in this universe like the one I have with my sister.  Deep as an ocean trench and fun and complicated and sometimes combative; validating and supportive and honest; sometimes frighteningly honest, because there is no one, and I mean no one, who knows me as well as she does. She’s like a mirror, in a room with really bright light that reveals everything and shows no mercy on the morning after too many glasses of wine.  Our bond is such that when it is strained, the whole world freezes to a halt until things are right again.  Which they are, quickly, because who can stand it otherwise?

Can brothers and sisters have relationships like this?  I don’t know.  Not even all sisters have relationships like this.  But I do.  We do.

So you understand why I was weeping five minutes into Frozen.

We didn’t catch Frozen in the theater.  The movie-going experience isn’t really LittleMan’s cup o’ tea — too loud, too much flashing on the screen — so we take in our media at home, approximately five months after everyone else.  This “Let it Go” song that the world can’t get enough of?  I had never heard it until the Oscars.  (Lucky us, the one movie LittleMan did want to see in the theater was The Lego Movie, so the song we can’t get enough of is “Everything is Awesome.”  Which is also known as “That Song That Will Play on Repeat in my Brain, Forever.”)

Spring Break came and went this year, and to pass a few days I took the kids to Tahoe with a girlfriend and two of her littles.  Four children ages 5-and-under; three days; two moms; about 11 inches of snowfall…suffice to say animated movies and chardonnay featured heavily into the experience.

We had planned to drive together but wound up traveling separately (which probably was a good thing).  I drive to Tahoe solo with the kids about once a year and it’s a science: keeping them occupied, quiet, and snacked-up while not having a traffic accident.  We don’t iPad (I know, we’re insane), but we do books on tape and soundtracks and stuff for at least half the ride.  On this particular journey, I loaded up the car, strapped in the kids, and fired up the Disney Music station on Pandora.

My sister and I watched a lot of Disney movies growing up and we looooooooved ourselves a soundtrack.  Our parents and their various, unwitting guests had to endure painstaking (and probably painful) re-enactments of duets (often twice, so that we could take turns singing the princess part).  We truly believed ourselves to be amazing masters of performance.  I know the entire scores of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, and the Lion King (also Les Mis and Miss Saigon, prompting my mother to say, and I quote: “I have no interest in that Anne Hathaway Les Mis movie.  You couldn’t pay me to listen to that music one more time.  Never.  Again.”)

Dad, Mom:  If you’re reading this now, I’m sorry.  I really am.  I can’t imagine how annoying we were.

But…

I have never listened to the Disney Music station on Pandora before (I just learned about Pandora a couple months ago.  Technology, you are learning, is not my thing).  The kids were happy, but I was in heaven, floating to Tahoe on a tide of nostalgia, growing weepy as Angela Lansbury trilled away.  I sang along at the top of my voice, did my best Ariel, ran a commentary for my young prisoners in the backseat about the time I saw this movie or that movie, the time I sang this song or that one in a talent show, which ones were my favorites, which ones were their Auntie’s favorites.

But I didn’t sing along to Frozen.  Hadn’t seen it.  Didn’t know the tunes.

“Do you know what Frozen is about, LittleMan?” I called into the back.
“Um, it’s about sisters.  Anna and Elsa.  Elsa is the Ice Queen.”
“Sisters?  Are they friends, or no?”
“Ummmmm.”  I could hear him thinking, trying to figure out how to explain the story.  “I think they are friends, but then they can’t be friends, and then in the end they are friends again.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding and looking at the road ahead.  “Sisters are like that sometimes.”

A while later another Frozen song came on.

“You know what, Mommy?” said LittleMan.  “I’d say that Anna and Elsa are pretty great singers.”
“I agree.  I think we should watch Frozen this weekend,” I suggested.
“Because we haven’t seen it?” said LittleMan.
“Yeah.”
“You know, we’ve seen Cars LOTS of times.”
“This is true, LittleMan.  This is true.”
“When are we gonna hear some Cars music?”

On the second night in Tahoe, we Redboxed Frozen (my first time with the Redbox! and it’s a noun and a verb already!).  The kids had been up seriously late the night before, so they were mellow and exhausted, flushed from a hot bath after playing in the cold.  My friend and I lit a fire, poured some wine.  Everyone curled up around the room to watch the movie, and within a half hour Babygirl was asleep on my lap, my friend’s youngest son was snoring, and the bigger boys were singing along softly and laughing at all the right moments.  I looked over at my friend (herself the youngest of three sisters) and the two of us were wiping tears from our eyes.

The freakish late April snow continued to fall outside the window.  Life imitating art.  Music, and magic.  And sisters: this story, maybe not told enough (or never told well enough) about a different kind of true love.

My sister turns 30-somesuch this week.  We don’t get to sing together much anymore, but we’re both raising girls.  Here’s to motherhood, sisterhood, cousinhood — and mostly, Happy Birthday to my sister.