The main reason my older sister was a mom way before she needed to be was that she saw her own future. She knew she wanted a husband and kids, a cozy home, all of that. At a very early age, she was a miniature, squinty shadow of all she’d gleaned from our own ma. And because I was the next child in the assembly line, the second oldest of a handful, I was the first baby she got to practice on, a large step up from her Raggedy Ann dolls. Kids and marriages would follow much later but, at the onset of all else, I was the only other kid in the home for a long stretch. I wasn’t the best option; I was the only option.

Sis would try grasping me in her tiny Charlie Brown arms and try forcing me into a comfortable position in her own too-small toddler lap, but there was a problem: I didn’t fit so well. It’s not her fault, though: she was the right size for whatever normal size for her age was; I, however, just wasn’t. And I take some pride in the fact I am my mom's heaviest and longest child, straight out of the gate. It’s a piece of weird personal history I want to take credit for: I came into this world a healthy 10 pounds and 12 ounces, a sprawling 23”.

Baby sizes aside, big sis kept after me when mom allowed it, fussed over what needed fussing with. She was an echo in miniature — Pete, meet repeat — and I, the lucky benefactor of a mom ever in training. As years got added to our lives, roles shifted considerably; we took turns being either best friends, as thick as thieves, or wide eyed enemies. I was yanking on pigtails like reins or we were seeing how hard we could kick the other before one of us backed off.

But we came to depend on one another; we found we had to. Especially after dad never made it home from work one unexpected night, maybe especially then. There was an urgency to our adaptation. Put simpler, we grew up faster. But that’s a story for another time.