My sister and her family stayed with us for most of last week, and we didn’t have a single eye-roll, hair-pull, or biting (comment or teeth marks in a thigh) incident. If we fought about anything, it was over paying for the other one’s lunch or groceries. One night, I called out to her from the kitchen, “You know, it feels like one of my best friends is visiting.” She shouted back that she felt the same way. This is new.

Over the weekend, we watched the only home video we have from our childhood. Mom missed the boat on buying a video camera, but when we met our stepdad’s parents for the first time, they documented the weekend. Pretty cute to see little sis feeding our Rottweiler from her high chair and to hear my most stuffiest nose voice. But it wasn’t all giggles. After figuring out that one could in fact move in front of this camera, I finally put my posed hand down from it’s frozen wave and became the entertainer. Little me spun around in circles with a toy suitcase, and when it thwacked 2 yr old lil’ sis on the head and she landed on her diaper bottom, I blamed her for running into it. “Why did you do that? Gosh!”

This is normal, right? Nothing to be proud of, but typical. I’ve heard other friends say that it wasn’t until they were out of the house that they realized that their sibling could be a friend rather than a foe, an ally in this world rather than someone to be their diametric opposite.

If you got your picture taken at the pahhhhrk today, don’t forget to stop on by Captain Foooootooo. And check. It. ooooooout. This is our one inside joke from adolescence: an imitation of a guy at Sea World. It’s so strange that after all those years together, we have a limited shared vocabulary. We remember events from our lives completely differently and are stunned when we compare notes. So we’ll just have to keep claiming common ground as we grow older. We already figured out how to do one other thing in unison– gasp in awe at her 2 month-old son’s great feats of accomplishments. And I swear I won’t spin around in circles near him.