Last night I watched a brilliant movie - “In Her Shoes”, a story about two sisters played by Toni Colette & Cameron Diaz. I laughed and cried in turn. Nothing new there then, given my propensity for leaking.
But I cried not only at the plot and the delicious Ms Diaz but because I have a sister just like her. My sister Kirsten is the Cameron Diaz to my Toni Colette - tall, blonde, willowy, beautiful, sassy - everything you don’t want in a sister (too much competition!) and everything I love.
Kirsten is my adopted step-sister, to give her her official title. But she has been in my life forever. My first memory of her is when her parents (her dad later to become my step-dad) brought her home just a few months old.
I remember my first glimpse of her when I was 7, lying on a changing mat, tiny and perfect in a little white dress and white shoes decorated with pompoms. She was born stylish. Over the years we grew up together sharing holidays and weekend trips on Loch Lomond.
When many years later our parents married we shared a bedroom on visits and grew closer, with me envying her spunk and beauty and loving her all the more for sharing it with me.
I’m the middle girl of three - a brother on either side instead of the still-born sister I should have had. Don’t get me wrong, it suited me just fine that way. I ruled the roost and forged my place as the only sister with two brothers to boss around, especially loved because of the older sister that wasn’t to be.
And yet I never resented Kirsten, no, I loved her as if she were my own flesh and blood. As we grew older together we spent more time in each other’s company. On graduating from Glasgow School of Art she moved to Edinburgh where I lived with Gavin and Max, working as a graphic designer and playing the perfect Aunty, drifting in and out of our lives looking gorgeous and with a string of delectable boyfriends in tow.
When Gavin and I split up it was Kirsten who saw me through it - plying me with wine and taking me out, playing her favourite Indiana Jones movies and making me laugh. We danced together and flirted together. She had a line in put downs that would impress Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada and is still to this day the most spectacular drunk I’ve ever met.
On nights out clubbing Kirsten wore the most vertiginous heels making her over 6 foot tall - and making me the perfect height for leaning on as the evening progressed. A complete health nut, when drunk she would insist on purchasing deep fried king rib suppers from the chippy washed down with cans of Irn Brew. Eating these while walking was a performance in itself and on making it back to her New Town flat she would frequently pass out on the floor still clutching the remains of said supper and eating it cold when she finally woke up the next day.
Oh how I admired her style. KIrsten always knew how to work hard and play hard and I lived vicariously through her for all the years I tried (and still do) to be good and behave properly.
It was Kirsten who I went to when depression finally gripped me so tightly that I couldn’t move without crying, Kirsten who trusted me with her most precious secrets, Kirsten who turned to me and shared my bed when her boyfriend suffered a blood clot on his brain. Just as sisters should be.
Then she moved to Sydney, Australia - striding out into the wide world where I’d never had the courage to venture. I wasn’t the best at keeping in touch - a Luddite with computers and no real clue about emailing, caught up in my own dramas back home.
But when she returned for holidays I would happily travel to wherever she was to spend time with her - that’s what sisters do.
And then my mum died and Kirsten returned to be with her family. Once again we shared our old room and she fought off her jet lag to support us all though our grief. Together again.
It was Kirsten I asked to be Maid of Honour at my first wedding and Kirsten who called me from Australia on the morning of my marriage to Chris.
And yet as I sit here in the wee small hours we haven’t had any contact for years. It happened so gradually that I didn’t even realise it had for a long time. I’d arrange to see her on her visits and she’d be too busy. I’d have birthday presents returned from Sydney because she’d moved house and not told me. Eventually she returned from Oz and I booked a flight up to Scotland to see her only to be told bluntly that she wasn’t interested.
It broke my heart to be rejected by her. I asked for an explanation and never received an answer. I wracked my brains for reasons, and over the years have thought of many - times I let her down, times I broke her confidence - wondering if our differences had rent us apart.
Several years ago when life became intolerable and it seemed as if I had lost many of the people I loved, I sought professional help, looking for answers that never came. Had I been so deluded for so many years? Was I a complete stranger to myself?
I didn’t find those answers but I learnt to accept these losses by listening to my therapist’s wise words: “Laura, you are only ever 50% of a relationship, you cannot control the choices and feelings of the other person”. A hard lesson indeed but one that I have practiced over and over as the years have passed and my sister has become a stranger to me.
Kirsten is married now with a baby daughter of her own. My step-dad and step-brother keep me informed of her life and I have learnt to accept that the next time we meet, many years from now, will probably be at my step-father’s funeral.
I no longer try to contact her, I fight my desire to know what went wrong and strive to accept that I am not a part of her life. This is my life lesson.
And I thank Kirsten for the good times and bad times we shared, for enriching my life for so many years and for being true to herself. Perhaps if we had been blood sisters it would have been different, perhaps not? It doesn’t matter, I am grateful all the same.
