Bic Pens, Boat Wakes and Broken Doors

My sisterhood with Julie may have been fortified in the bath, where bubbles doubled as clouds, our imaginations took root, and laughter expressed more joy than a million words ever could. But our connection extended far beyond the bathroom walls.

As rumor has it, when my parents brought Julie home from the hospital, I decided the occasion called for a performance. A stubborn toddler still refusing to “void” in the big potty (or any potty, for that matter), I decided Julie’s homecoming was the day I should storm into my parents’ bedroom brandishing a fresh bowl of my own poop like it was the Olympic torch.

I leapt onto the bed, sprinting back and forth across the pillows where Mom sat cradling her seven-pound-10-ounce newborn. There I was, waving my offering like a parade flag, unaware that the swaddled bundle in my mom’s arms was about to tilt my entire world on its axis.

Back then, I stared at Julie with envy, cataloguing all the attention Mom, Dad, and everyone else lavished on her every coo. But as she grew, I caught myself staring for another reason—because she elicited awe. I was the boisterous, melodramatic one, staging operas out of thin air anytime I felt the room needed a jolt of joy. Julie was the quiet counterpoint—thoughtful and observing the world as though she had secrets most of us weren’t bright enough to uncover.

You wouldn’t have known any of this sentiment by how often I punched her or chased her threateningly through the house. Once, when she sang her nerve-fraying classic “Doot doot doot doot doot doot, I can’t hear you!” from behind her locked bedroom door as I attempted to reason with her, I was furious. She knew I wanted to pummel her, so she was taking cover. When she wouldn’t open the door, I went full-on Hulk. One powerful shoulder shove and a couple equally mighty high-kicks later, the door splintered off its top hinge and teetered sideways on her bed. After a deafening silence hung in the air, Julie backed into the corner and screamed bloody murder. I realized two things in that moment. One, I had superhuman strength. Two, Dad’s footsteps on the floor above us were explosively louder when he was sprinting to a crime scene.

That was not a good day for me.

And how can I forget that time I, enraged, stabbed Julie in the knee with a blue-capped Bic pen? There she was, cross-legged on the floor, chirping that same infuriating “doot doot doot” jingle, while I begged her to share the pack of Juicy Fruit gum Dad had brought home “for us to share.” 

My definition of sharing was dividing the pack evenly. Julie’s definition was serenading me until I lost my mind. Nothing boiled my blood like that dismissive little song. But my desire for a stick of gum was short-lived. As Dad rushed Julie into the hall bathroom to doctor her stab wound, I couldn’t stomach the thought of chewing anything after looking down at the pen cap decorated with a strip of Julie’s bloody skin curled up like a cherry-flavored Fruit Roll-Up. Bblluuup. 

That was also not a good day for me.

Julie and I joined forces and made mischief together as well.

One day, Julie and I were in big trouble for something I can’t recall. Mom was furious, threatening the classic, “Wait until your father gets home!” We stood on the hill in our backyard, rehearsing our defense strategy. As the oldest, I was the lucky one who got to present our testimony. I stared east, trying to come up with a story that would play to Dad’s sentimental side. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see Julie, six years old, hands on her hips, head shaking in perfect imitation of me. When I looked over at her, she said with complete seriousness, “How can we even try to go on? Though we try, how can we carry on?” 

She was quoting lyrics from our favorite ABBA song, SOS. I scoffed and gave her the perfect eye roll, but secretly, I was impressed. I felt proud, like I was rubbing off on her. Besides, she was the cutest thing I’d ever seen if I’m honest. A tiny, toe-headed, pigtailed bundle of innocence who made me smile while simultaneously confounding (and annoying) me.

On the flip side of our collective ‘in trouble’ moments, there was the time Karen Schroeder antagonized Julie while we were playing in the basement. I channeled my inner Mama Bear and lunged between Julie and Karen, whipping out a sassy finger-pointed, “Hey! You leave my little sister alone, you butthole!” 

Julie showed her gratitude for me defending her by running upstairs and ratting me out for saying a bad word. This earned me the one and only spanking of my life—delivered right in front of Mom and Dad’s fondue party company. I didn’t feel that betrayed again until Coach Spickler paddled me for yelling “holy shit” in P.E. class after landing butt-first onto Maria Bohanon’s heel during a layup drill.

Enter summers.

Julie and I ventured to the creek anytime we had the chance, despite Mom yelling emphatically from the back of the house, “Girls! Do not go to the creek or to the woods. Do you hear me?!” We were usually already out the door by the time Mom got to the ‘hearing’ part, so we would proclaim, “Opposite Day,” and head toward Woodbury, on our way to forge the creek through the culvert below I-70 that led to Stewart Heights Park. Rats shouldn’t have survived in that dark and dirty tunnel, let alone two little girls.

We also rode our bikes to the woods and took the trail's curves as fast as we could, without using our brakes. That didn’t turn out so well for Julie once. She hit a rock and her handlebars bounced up and whacked the bone just above her right eye. As blood streamed down her face, I sprinted to our cousins’ house a quarter of a mile away to get help. 

I think I know where the four of us kids got the notion that “pain builds character” (besides Uncle Steve quoting it like scripture). We had plenty of opportunities to test the theory. Our childhood playground was a rusted swing set that, at some point, prompted our parents to encourage us to “just use the slide.” Consequently, the slide’s metal, likely from overuse, curled at the bottom into sharp metal fangs that could fillet your calf on the way down. On hot days, it doubled as a griddle. You haven’t lived if you haven’t had to peel your thighs off sun-scorched metal.

The double-seated booth swing was declared off-limits after Julie and I launched it so high that it threatened to rip all of the swing set’s shallow cemented legs out of the ground. Julie paid the price for our defiance of that rule with a split chin and a broken bone. This was karmic proof that my failure to toe the line as a big sister left her scarred—literally.

Then, there was that time we chased a herd of cows down a dry creek bed while our family was camping near the Missouri River. Julie and I wielded the walking sticks that Dad had fashioned for us and headed into a tree-lined creek beyond an open field. When we banged our sticks against the rock floor, the sound echoed as if we were in the mountains. It was exhilarating—making us shout with glee. That is, until our laughter morphed into screams as a very fed-up mama cow turned and charged us. 

I took off, yelling behind me, “Run, Juice, run!” We sprinted up the embankment and toward our campsite, my ponytail flapping like a distress signal that told Julie to run like hell. Dad saw us barreling toward him with the cow not far behind us. He hurdled the picnic table in a single bound and ran full bore, scooped me up with one arm and Julie with the other, and spun us back toward camp. Mom let out her patented Joyce Arthur scream—the same one that today makes her grandchildren howl with laughter.

And then there were our infamous Sister Rides. In our teenage years, we’d take the speedboat out for a spin, bumping every dock in the cove on our way to the main lake. We blamed our dock pinball on nervousness from Dad glaring at us from the lake house window, cussing and shouting, “Turn the wheel, and slow down, damnit!”

Once we got to the main lake, the real adventure began. We would hit wakes head-on and launch ourselves into the air like Evel Knievel with pigtails. We never considered the fact that the hull wasn’t designed for water gymnastics. We drove it as if it were an indestructible hovercraft.

We once ran right over a skier’s tow rope and nearly took out half the lake. We laughed hysterically despite the driver of the ski boat cussing us louder (and with way worse cuss words) than Dad.

Julie and I didn’t just share traumatic moments when we were little. We shared a lot of special sentimental ones, too. She was the only one I could lie beside and cry in the far back seat of Mom’s station wagon when “Seasons In the Sun” would come on the radio. By the time the song’s verses got to the point of the “stars just being starfish on the beach,” we were both wrecked. I knew my little sister was experiencing the same broken-hearted sadness I was while listening to that song. And for maybe the first time, I didn’t feel melodramatic about my feelings. I felt seen.

If childhood wasn’t adventurous enough, adulthood delivered its own bonding material for me and Julie. Like the time in Seattle when the snow was so uncustomarily heavy that the metro shut down in the middle of a bus route and forced us to exit into deep, unwalkable snow. Julie and I trudged two miles doing high knee lifts through that blizzard, laughing at how ridiculous we looked when we should have been weeping that our designer boots we’d bought that day were now ruined. Julie visited me almost every year once her kids were older. We’d stay up late talking about life, love, and family. Those conversations stitched us together just as tightly as the antics of our childhood.

Looking back, Julie has been the other half of life’s seesaw. She’s the one I tormented, the one I conspired with, the one who matched my drama with quiet steadiness. Somewhere between the bubbles, Bic pens, boat wakes, and broken doors, I realized that my sister was not just my audience or my sidekick—she was my gift. 

Though I may have entered her life waving a bowl of caca, I hope the end of my life allows me a chance to weave the tales of us and pay homage to the sister who still makes me laugh, who makes me think, and who calls me to be a better version of myself simply by being the best version of hers.