When asking my mother the simple question, “What was it like to raise us?” I was met with an unexpected answer. This inquiry evoked an almost immediate eye roll, entirely catching me off guard. She went on to tell me about the ceaseless arguing between my sister and I throughout my entire childhood, making me recall distant memories that I had long forgotten. One story, however, I remembered in vivid detail.

These days my sister, Alana, and I couldn’t be closer. She is my rock, my go to, my partner in crime. However it didn’t used to be like this. Throughout our entire childhood we were sworn enemies, according to my mother and my own vague memories. She suffered as the forgotten middle sibling while I was afflicted with youngest child syndrome. I required all of my parents attention while also assuring that she would receive none of it. This led to us, let’s just say, butting heads, on a startlingly regular basis. While I could not specifically recall many occasions in which she and I fought, my mother certainly had. She described the scene to me as a battlefield, each of us taking our positions on opposite ends of the stairs, our faces red and ears fuming as we screamed at each other incoherently at the top of our lungs. Each vendetta would last days. Our strategies for taking down the enemy, or at the very least annoying them, included ripping posters off each other’s walls, breaking prized possessions—such as hair clips and our favorite jewelry—and staging fake shoving incidents (now this I had remembered, a classic move). I, however, being the younger sibling who in all truth just wanted their sister to be proud of her, always apologized first. I would wave my white surrender flag in the form of note slid under her door. This would almost inevitably be returned to me ripped in half, though my Lincoln-esque mission for peace would prevail.

Finally the war that waged in the O’Dwyer household would come to an end in the event of either Alana getting tired of ripping up my notes, or me running out of paper. While peace reigned at that moment, within a matter of mere hours war would be declared once again.