The Other Sister—A Birth Order Story

By Nan Reinhardt

In my new novel, Falling for the Doctor, the hero Max Lange is the classic youngest child. Carefree and always wanting everyone to be happy—living in an imaginary world where life is exactly as it should be, believing the best about people, whether they deserve it or not. 

It was interesting to write about a family with several children because I’m one of four kids—I had two older sisters and a younger brother, so I land smack in the middle. I wrote Max’s character as youngest from my viewpoint as a middle child and that proved somewhat thought-provoking.

 My sister Kate, who was second in line, died in 2014 and I miss her every day. Growing up, my sisters were the “big kids” and my brother and I, the “little kids,” and that’s how it played out until we grew up and began to go out on our own. Although I never believed that I suffered from Middle Child Syndrome, I’ve always felt different from my siblings. My two sisters, PJ and Kate, were very close, and they both clucked after my younger brother like a pair of meddlesome mother hens. I am the “other sister.”

It’s always been a family joke—Nan is the “other sister.” Now, not in the Juliet Lewis’s character in the film by that title sense of the word. More like, “Hey, this is Nan—you know, my other sister.” Invariably the new acquaintance would remark, “You don’t look one bit like your sisters.” They were right. I don’t look at all like PJ and Kate, whose resemblance to each other and to our mother was a little eerie. If I weren’t the spitting image of my Dad’s sister Patty, I’d seriously wonder if Mom might have gotten overly familiar with milkman back in the cold days of January 1953. 

The older I get, the more I am of two minds about being “the other sister.” Some days, I’m perfectly okay with it—I know I’ve always been different from PJ and Kate and always will be. They were very social, active in their church and communities, and flitting hither  and yon to shop or go out to eat or to the movies. Although Kate is gone now, PJ is still very social. I’m more reserved, more inward, and because I work at home as an author/editor, I sometimes have a tendency to be a hermit (their word, not mine). But when PJ moved here from the West coast about sixteen years ago, I had fantasies about a new kind of sisterhood.

In my extremely active imagination, I pictured shopping trips, lunches, movies, and long weekends together, the three of us sharing secrets, drinking wine, and reminiscing about our childhood. I became convinced that all of us in the same city again would fix my “other sister syndrome.” But of course, it didn’t. PJ immediately got wrapped up in Kate’s life—kids and grandkids who needed lots of help—as well as church stuff, and a whole new group of friends. The two of them became their own little community, and I was still on the outside, with my nose pressed against the glass of their close relationship.

But it’s not all a sad, sad tale. First, before she passed, Kate called me every morning on her way to work—oh, how I miss those early morning phone sessions. At first I think she called me because she was bored driving and she knew I would be up, writing or working, but as time went on, I believe it was our opportunity to be connected—just the two of us. Since Kate’s passing, PJ and I have become good friends—she’s retired and I’m self-employed, so we can fit each other in easily. Both of us had sons living far away, so we shared that common bond, although my kid moved closer and now lives nearby. She and I hit the nail salon for mani/pedis once a month or so, and talk regularly on the phone. You know, like sisters. 

Most important though is that I’ve found I like being the other sister—I like being the “odd” one. I like my privacy and peace and my hermit tendencies suit me. I love my sisters and we have had fun together. PJ and I still do. I know she’s there if I need her and I’m always there for her, too. Best of all, I know PJ and Kate, even from heaven, love me just the way I am—in all my “otherness.”

So tell me, where do you fall in the birth order, and how has that affected your relationships with your siblings?

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Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today bestselling author of romantic fiction for Tule Publishing. Her day job is working as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, however, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten and is still writing, but now from the viewpoint of a wiser, slightly rumpled, woman in her prime. Nan lives in the Midwest with her husband of 48 years, where they split their time between a house in the city and a cottage on a lake.

Talk to Nan at: nan@nanreinhardt.com

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FALLING FOR THE DOCTOR, Nan Reinhardt

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Category: On Writing