When I was a kid there were two pretty extraordinary forces in my life: a book of poems called “A Light in The Attic,” and my older sister. By the time I was eight years old, I was a sullen member of the RIF (reading is fundamental) program. I segregated my worth from others each time I was asked to leave the “standard” class curriculum to go to the mortifying special needs classroom. With a dyslexic diagnosis and an overachieving father who was beside himself, things looked bleak.

Later that year in the RIF room I met a woman, a teacher, with a warm round face like a smiling planet who introduced me to the lovely linguistic stylings of Shel Silverstein. I fell in love with Clarence Lee from Tennessee and Mr. Speds and Mr. Spats with all of their heads and all of their hats. The intoxicating mixture of swift tongue aerobics and captivating cadence coupled with the outrageous stories ignited a hunger in me that hasn’t let up since.

It was shortly after I discovered “A Light in The Attic,” that I wrote my first poem called “Shy Little Grace,” a tragic limerick about a timid girl who finally speaks. Sadly her tonsils fall out at the end. Clearly it was a hybrid of confessional and the absurd lent to me by the talented Mr. Silverstein. When Mrs. Pond, my fourth grade teacher, hung it on the wall something stirred in me. I was delighted by both the praise and the sweet feeling of homecoming. I had discovered my voice for the first time.

My older sister has always had a voice. You can’t miss it. A born entertainer and advocate for justice, she has never been one to clam up. Every chance I got, I played her Cyndi Lauper record, and teased my hair into an Aqua Net shield (ok now I am really showing my age!) I was trying my hardest to emulate her. She was my absolute hero. When she got pregnant with her first child, I was fourteen and hit with the double whammy of her leaving home and starting her own family. I wrote a poem comparing her to a dandelion that was finally wished upon, but secretly I was devastated.

I was losing her—losing the familiar feel of sisterhood under the same roof; a sister in the next room with the curly telephone cord wrapped around her arm as she hammered out the latest adolescent dilemma. A sister to teach me how to dance. One who lets me sit with her and her friends while they drink wine coolers on the electrical box. Even one who tells me to leave her alone. The prospect of inheriting her larger room and possibly some Prince posters was not going to fill the abandonment I felt.

It was like I never considered she might leave someday. My sister was becoming a mother. Where did that leave me? I went to a Pea in the Pod and watched her try on Maternity clothes. My eyes stung with betrayal. Already ignited with teenage angst, her departure into adulthood and the dopey maternal wear that came with it sent me into a self-pity spiral. Lots of self-obsessed journal writing and The Cure were a big part of my high school years.

That first sting of separation from my sister was only the beginning of a lifetime of challenges in the Sisterhood Saga. Growing up with someone is intimate and gloriously special, but it doesn’t make friendship easy. We had a fight recently. A real doozy. It felt like breaking the same bone for the fifteenth time. It seems as long as we’ve known each other, we have been fighting. I became a mother this year, and while it does bring us closer together to share the similar experience of motherhood, it has also severed us even more. We are different. This in and of itself doesn’t cause us pain, but the denial of our differences does. The more we try to stay who we used to be, the harder it becomes to see the beauty of the women we are today.

We are still carrying around our stories about each other like old library books, only the fees aren’t monetary, but pulmonary, resulting in screaming matches that end in shame induced silence. All of this gets swept beneath a rug that is hereditary. We are good bullshitters. A full on explosive argument is easily followed the next day with a mani/pedi with mom in the middle chair to keep it from becoming awkward.

We resolve out of obligation, there is no deliberate forgiveness, only a sense of inconvenience because some major holiday is approaching or I need to borrow some shoes. I keep waiting for a revelation about this relationship to be revealed but maybe it’s like the other great force in my life—poetry, in that I have to just show up, every day to see what unfolds. Just as I have with writing. There is no formula for love, only our intentions and the actions we take. I have to keep showing up, even when I don’t know the answers.

Speech is powerful. It can save souls or tear people apart. Thankfully, I have the wisdom of Sisters and Shel Silverstein to guide me into the deepest part of myself, even when it’s scary.

It’s Dark In Here by Shel Silverstein

I am writing these poems

From inside a lion,

And it’s rather dark in here.

So please excuse the handwriting

Which may not be too clear.

But this afternoon by the lion’s cage

I’m afraid I got too near.

And I’m writing these lines

From inside a lion,

And it’s rather dark in here.

–Shel Silverstein

Jennifer Albrecht can currently be found writing a poem while changing a diaper, creating metaphors while giving facials in a spa in Las Vegas, NV and whiling together wild stories while being dragged around by her goofy Labradors. Her work has appeared in Minerva Rising Mothers issue, From The Depths, The Silver Compass and The Red Rock Review.