When I was a little kid there was always this older chick hanging around me. She was and still is a complete knockout. She has this contagious laughter that makes you smile the instant she starts laughing. She has this positive attitude which is the complete opposite of my frowny one, and she smiles even when someone takes the last piece of her cake (while I find that a good enough reason to murder someone).
I looked up to that pretty chick living under my roof very much. Even when we stopped sharing a roof! So I tried to imitate whatever she was doing, cause I always found her so cool. Since she’s 14 years older than me it was not an appropriate time for me to do the same things she did. But I did them anyway! Cause she did! So I was kissing boys in kinder garden at the age of 5 cause I saw her kissing a boy, I first shaved my legs at the age of 10, cause that’s what she was doing, I even shaved my eyebrows off – cause I saw her doing something to hers (was not quite sure what that was, so I went with shaving – turns out that was not what she was doing – cause she still had hers, while mine were completely gone).
She’d take me to parties, to clubs, to bars, to the cinema, to hang out with her friends… All of her friends were my “big people” friends, regardless of the fact that I was too small to even shake their hands. She even got me a 90210 Brenda Barbie and Dylan Ken when she came back home after living in the States! How many of you had a Brenda Barbie?! – Yeah, exactly what I thought.
When I was 12 she got married. And me being a 12 year old me meant pulling a prank. So when she looks at her wedding video now – she won’t just see a beautiful, romantic, white wedding. She’ll also see this little devil standing on the stairs in front of the church as the newlyweds exit, throwing rice in their face and hitting them with not exactly “wedding amounts of rice”. She will also see herself on the happiest day of her life screaming : Nika, stop it! , Nika, enough!
Then she started having these babies – not one, not two, but three of them! And while I was still struggling with difficult life dilemmas such as: “do I prefer fruit loops or cocoa puffs for breakfast?”, she was already the best mom in the world! Even now, 17 years later, while I am dealing with enormous challenges on daily basis, such as: “to wear heels or flats?”, she handles 3 kids, a marriage, a job, a dog and still manages to smile 24/7.
Since I’ve been living abroad for the past few years I didn’t have the opportunity to see her, or the little munchkins as much, but there isn’t a single day that I don’t think of them and miss them. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I think that’s complete bollocks, my heart is already fond enough, and absence simply sucks!
So every day I miss this fabulous woman that introduced me to Elton John and ABBA, while most of my friends still sang nursery rhymes. I miss the chick that introduced me to Pulp Fiction, even if I couldn’t comprehend what it was about. I miss the awesome friend that took me to a club for the first time, even if I was more of an embarrassment than a great clubbing partner. I miss the woman that loves me no matter how hard I screw up. I miss the hero that proved there’s always something to smile about, no matter how hard life gets. I miss my SISTER. Love you Ana!
