Michelle Robertson - Sister Rivalry

 

Well, I'm the oldest of four girls in my family. My first sister was born just before my second birthday, and then my other two sisters are 10 and 14 years younger. So, the majority of my childhood, most of my memories are just me and my dad and Rebecca and my mom. 

 

My mom and dad were two totally different people. My mom's just super shy and very strait-laced, never did anything wrong. She didn't smoke or drink or swear or gamble or anything like that. And my dad grew up on the rodeo, and loved drinking beer and smoking some weed, and whatever else he could get his hands on. So, they had nothing in common except for as parents, they had this one thing, and that was that neither one of them really had any issues with playing favorites. 

 

So, Rebecca was my mom's favorite [audience laughter] and I was my dad's favorite. If my mom went anywhere, Rebecca was going to be with her and my dad took me with him. So, Rebecca got to go to the grocery store in the bank, and I got to go to the party store to buy beer and to my aunt and uncle's houses every single weekend, where my dad would hang out with his brothers and sisters, and they would drink beer and smoke whatever and play cards. And me and all my cousins, this huge extended family, we'd ride horses or do whatever we wanted, because nobody was watching us. [audience laughter] 

 

We both individually had these really great childhoods, Rebecca and I. But my parents, in creating this division of a family, created this huge animosity. So, it wasn't like normal sibling rivalry. There were no moments of tenderness. We didn't do each other's hair or makeup or talk about boys, like we did not. We hated each other. Hated. Legit. Hated each other. [audience laughter] When I think about competition, she was my fiercest opponent for all of my life, because we were constantly trying to outdo one another and prove that we were loved. It continued that way, once we moved out, we both moved out, got married, had our own families. 

 

Now, to me, I had grown up with this big extended family, and so it was important to me that my kids knew their cousins. It just was like an unfortunate circumstance that they were Becca's kids. [audience laughter] It really was. You don't know her. [audience laughter] 

So, it was fine, because my dad would call me every weekend and ask me to come over for dinner, and I'd say, “Yeah, can you have mom call Becca and ask her Becca to bring the kids over?” And she would. So, we all spent time. Well, Becca would hang out with my mom in the house, and me and my dad would do the fun-- light off fireworks for no reason or ride four wheelers. And so, all the kids would hang out with us. 

 

And then my two younger sisters grew up and moved out, and my parents were just left with each other and they realized, I think, what everybody else knew, they didn't have anything in common. Well, my mom probably got tired of my dad drinking all the time, and my dad probably just got tired of listening to my mom bitch about him drinking all the time. [audience laughter] So, my mom moved out, but she still came over on weekends. And then, she moved back in, so that was fine. And then, she moved back out and then she didn't come over on weekends anymore and then Rebecca didn't come over on weekends anymore. Within this really quick couple of months, my entire dysfunctional family kind of started to fall apart. 

 

It was really a short time. Like a couple months later, I will never forget, I was at home. I was working from home that day. I'm sitting on my bed, and my laptop's out and these papers, and my phone rings, and I pick it up and it says, “Karen/Mom.” That's my mom. She never, ever called me. And so, I panicked because I thought something must have happened to my dad for my mom to call me. So, I answer the phone. I'm a little panicked, but she was totally fine. And she's like, “Well, that's over. That's final.” And I was like, “What it's final?” And she said, “The divorce.” And I said, “What divorce?” And she said, “Between me and your dad.” And I was like, “No, there's no divorce between you and dad.” And she's like, “Well, no, there was. It's final. I'm leaving the court right now.” 

 

So I wanted to ask questions, but I couldn't because I felt my eyes get hot and a lump in my throat. And so, I was just like, “Okay, thanks for letting me know. I'm working. I'm really busy. I got to go.” And so, I hung up the phone. I cried so hard and so ugly for such a long time. I wanted to call a friend. I wanted to talk to someone, but I couldn't, because they would ask what was wrong, and I would say, my parents’ divorce is final, and they would say, I didn't know your parents were getting divorced and I'd say, yeah, me neither. And that was going to be super weird. I was really mad at myself, because really the only person in the world that I wanted to talk to was Rebecca, but I couldn't-- 

 

I actually didn't even know if I had her phone number, but I did. After a long time, I looked and I did, and I eventually worked up the courage to call her. I thought it was going to be weird. To be told, I made it a little bit weird because she said, “Hey.” And I said, “This is Michelle. I'm your sister.” [audience laughter] And she was like, “I know who you are.” [audience laughter] And so, I made it a little weird. But then, I just said, “Oh, okay. Hey, have you talked to mom?” And she said in her really like Rebecca, like way, “Have I talked to mom? I talk to mom all the time. Mom calls me every day.” 

 

And I was like, “Oh, okay. Okay. I didn't know. So, you know that I didn't know.” And she said, “You don't know what?” And I was like, “That it's final.” And she said “That what's final?” And I said, “The divorce.” And she said, “What divorce?” And I said, “Between mom and dad.” She didn't say anything, and then I heard her crying. And then I started crying all over again and then we just cried together for this really, really long time. We stayed on the phone for hours, just talking and crying and talking bad about our parents, and figuring out how we were going to tell our sisters, and how we were going to tell our kids and how important it was to both of us that our kids stayed in contact. 

 

We talked and we cried until there was just nothing left. And then, we just sat there forever on the phone in silence until she said, in her really Rebecca like way, like, “Why would mom call you instead of me? Mom always calls me.” [audience laughter] And for the first time in 35 years, I was able to just laugh because I just didn't care anymore, because I realized that there didn't have to be a competition and that she wasn't my opponent. And for the first time, I was just talking to my sister.