Skutt Sisters Christmas 2005 Can you say "Big Pink"?!
I was going through my senior portfolio from college the other night. Being a communications major, I did lots of writing and speaking. I was also a family science minor so I did many family studies. Reading the interview I had with my parents about raising me was priceless. Yet, the papers I did on my sister really opened my eyes to how much I look up to her. She was honestly the focus of most of my family projects and any other creative communications projects I was assigned. She and I went through our parents divorce right around that time and we really had to help each other come up and breathe some days. Our reality of life was changing after we were grown and that was hard on both of us even though we were so far apart in life. She was married with a baby and I was deciding where to go to school. We were already very close but that stepping stone in our life caused us to bond together like crazy glue.
I loved looking at my final paper in Mrs. Benning’s parenting class. She wrote, “Tell your sister how much you look up to her!” Julie really is a hero in my eyes. I have very few earthly heroes and she is one of them. She can read my voice like a book over the phone. She knows if I am happy, sad, lying, hiding, mad, hurt or overwhelmed. I love that about her. I can just say “Hey” when she picks up the phone and she knows. I think being eight years apart and being as close as we are is a blessing. Most people I talk to missed the formative lives of their siblings if they had that large of an age gap. I wrote in one of my papers, “I was always riding in the backseat of a car listening to hair bands and Cindy & Julie talk about boys while most of my friends were at home riding their bikes.” Then there was a quote from Julie in that paper. I had asked her why she let me go everywhere with her friends and boyfriends and she said, “I didn’t want you to stay at home by yourself and be sad.” How sweet is that! I hope my kids and her kids learn how to love a sibling like that. She is my rock, my cushion, my angel, my complete opposite, my “Conan” and she is my sister. If you don’t know her, you really should. And by the way, I got A’s on all my papers!
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