I was the favored child at first, but then my sibling took over.

Being the favored sibling was fine when I was young, but as I got older, I rebelled against my role.

In the beginning, I was the golden child. My mom told me that before I was born, she was grappling with both an unhappy mistake of a marriage and a 4-year-old who had kicking, screaming tantrums every day for hours. I came into the world happy, with a headful of blonde curls and laughing with delight. While my older sister was not so happy about my sticking around, I puppy-followed her everywhere, and at first, we both basked in our mom’s delight. (Don’t ask about our dad, an angry abuser, who thankfully was rarely there.)

But when I turned 12, all alliances shifted. Of course they did, I was 12! While my sister was Velcroed to my mother, wearing the same shocking pink or neon green clothes, my hormones began to change me. I grew more private. I wanted my door closed and my clothing black. My mom, perplexed, yanked my door open and asked me how my day was, and I kept silent. She bought me the same bright clothing she bought my sister, but I never wore it. Mostly, she began to hate my now-black hair, my long sheepdog bangs, my curls. It was easy to tell I wasn’t the favored child anymore. “You’re too independent,” my mother snapped, even as my sister was beginning to overshare about her dates. “No one looks like you,” she told me, explaining why I didn’t get the part in the play, didn’t have a boyfriend, and was an embarrassment to the family. And when I finally did have a boyfriend, he was the wrong type, not Jewish, dabbling in drugs, hair too long. Unlike my sister, who was “waiting for marriage,” I was sneaking up to the local abandoned ski slope and sleeping with my guy.

If it was harder being the bad sister, then it was actually more of a relief being the outcast when I was at college—at least at first—because I could always leave and go back to my busy new life. My sister commuted, living at home, still sharing everything with my mother, while I moved away as far as I could. When I came home, there were more comparisons. Why was I studying ballet when I could be doing aerobics like my sister and like my mother? It began to hurt. I asked my mom, quietly, why I was the least favored one. Why was everything about me somehow wrong? To my amazement, my mom was surprised. “Oh, honey,” she said. “You are successful and amazing, and you don’t need as much parenting as your sister. You’ll always be fine on your own. Your sister needs me more.”

But was that true? I certainly needed my mom after the sudden death of my young fiancé. I also desperately needed her after I got critically and mysteriously ill after the birth of my first child. My mother responded to the call, immediately flying up, great in a crisis, 100 percent there for me, for whatever I needed.

But then, I began to notice something else. I wasn’t important to my sister anymore. She didn’t come up to help us while I was so sick, avoiding me for a year. She begrudged my getting a book deal, telling me I always got what she herself had wanted, that what was hard for her was effortless for me. When I tried to explain to her how hard I had worked for my success, how desperately I had wanted it, she refused to hear me. I may have needed less parenting, but I sure needed more support. And when I tried to talk to my mother about it, my mom apologized for her. But did that mean we were loved equally? I had my doubts.

As my mom grew older, I began to change how I felt. I wasn’t the one on speed dial; my sister was. I wasn’t the one living minutes away from my mom when she went into independent living. It was my sister, handling all of it, happily being the favored sibling, the one my mother depended on to call her every few hours, the one who was not only an integral part of my mom’s life, but of her boyfriend Walter’s life, too. (And if my mom preferred my sister, Walter did, too, and that was okay.) I knew my mom loved us differently, but it was actually a relief that my sister was there to give her what she needed every day.

My mother’s gone now, but I think about her a lot. I loved her, and I miss her. But I don’t blame her for changing alliances. In the end, it wasn’t a contest about who was the better sister at all. My mom needed a daughter who could give her constant support and companionship in a way that felt more like they were best friends and equals. That wasn’t who I was. But it was who my sister was, and if she was the favorite sibling at the end of my mom’s life, all I feel about it is gratitude.

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