You definitely recognize this if you have a younger sister

‘I used to always carry a doll with me, one without batteries, my little sister Faye.’ This is how the poem begins in which I describe the mother-doll feeling for my sister, because she was the doll and I was the mother. We are three years apart and you would think that once you are both over twenty, age no longer matters, but that’s not true. She is and remains my little sister, even though I am always estimated to be younger. Fay is half a head taller and a whole head smarter, but still. You probably recognize this if you have a younger sister:

1. Starting with the pony. Because everyone with a younger sister has at some point given her a pony, while she calmly and unsuspectingly sat in the ‘hairdresser’s chair’.

2. When she fell as a child, I would cry and I lie awake from her heartbreak.

3. That inner doll-mother is clearly still lurking in me. Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs: NO, NO, and once again NO, three red crosses. On the forbidden list, basta.

4. What a childhood that girl has had. I have mowed the entire lawn for her with an electric sit-on mower. No curfew for that little one when she went out, she always had later bedtimes and if she ever got a 3.7 for German, there was nothing wrong at all.

5. Oh yes, about going out, I used to have to stand in line with a fake mustache and a wig to try to get into the club. My sister just borrowed my ID from the age of sixteen. What a life.

6. I used to go completely loco if she raided my wardrobe, but that has turned one hundred and eighty degrees. She can have anything of mine (except my boyfriends). But really, I wish her the whole world.

7. I remain three years older and therefore also three years wiser. Even when we are 54 and 57, I will still always be right.

‘That’s why I love to cuddle with you so much, leaving will never happen again, that doll-mother feeling.’