On sisters, small towns and shrinking

I took my Great Aunt Minnie a card the other day for her 99th birthday, and since she lives at the same nursing home as my grandmother, I stopped in Grandma’s room first to see if she wanted to tag along. It’s 100 feet down the hall, but Grandma, who’s 97, never leaves her room except for preprogrammed activities such as lunch or church services.  There was no official party planned for Minnie, so I’m not sure Grandma  would’ve embarked on the journey to wish her sister happy birthday if someone else didn’t make it happen.

As we creeped along (Grandma’s using a walker now), I found myself wondering which of her sisters Grandma was closest to. Minnie is a reasonable candidate. They were nearest in age and once shared a bed with a set of toddler twin brothers. But Grandma had a lot of sisters to choose from. Thirteen siblings lived to adulthood, and I’m thinking half of them were sisters. With that many potential playmates under one roof, you probably gravitate toward those who are most like you, just like on a playground.

In a family as large as Grandma’s, my sister and I would be at opposite ends of the personality continuum. There’s an age difference of eight years, but there’s more to it than that. She trends red and I lean blue. She’s stylish, as they say here in small town America, whereas the term most likely applied to me, in the local vernacular, is “different.” (That’s a word that takes in a lot of territory in this territory, but I like to think I’m not scary-different so much as puzzling-different.)

Traci’s the only sister I’ve got, though. So we hang out quite a bit, glossing over our differences. She’s my single biggest supporter on my quest to lose weight. (Bob is supportive, too, but since he’s always accepted me no matter what my size, he’s not as maniacal about it.) Lately we’ve even been working out together, ostensibly training for a 5K run later this summer. 

The only problem: Any day now, Traci’s going to start bugging me about buying new clothes now that I‘ve dropped a size or so. At which point I’ll be forced to reveal that I’ve pledged to only buy secondhand clothing this year. To avoid this collision of universes,  I’m going to need to step up my scouting trips to Goodwill and Salvation Army. Because I’ve now lost 26.4 pounds, and I’ve only got like maybe three things that still fit.