Phoebe Backer
My Sister's Protector
My Sister's Protector
I was three years old when my older sister, Chelsea, contracted encephalitis and fell into a coma. I remember that time only in flashes: my grandmother coming into my room at night and saying “God bless,” which sounded to me like “gobless”; the long, white hospital hallway; the Cinderella doll was I was told to give my sister but kept for myself.
My sister was in the hospital for two months, and during that time I lived with relatives. At the time, I could not know how serious my sister’s condition was or how terrifying and traumatic the experience was for my parents. When I was older, I would learn that the chances of Chelsea surviving had been slim to none, that every day my mother and father lived with a sense of dread and desperation. Miraculously, my sister pulled through. When it came to recovery, though, she still had a long road ahead of her. She started at a local rehabilitation center, where they helped her learn to blink and chew, then walk and talk. All the milestones she had, at five, passed long ago, now had to be relearned. Of course, I didn’t have any sense of the challenges and hardships my sister had ahead of her. I was just happy to have her home, and to be with my family again.
My sister’s road to recovery was slow and often painful. Though I was the younger sister, I began to see myself as her protector. Her illness and rehabilitation had left her in many ways fragile and she struggled to find her place among her peers. Looking back, I recognize the strength it must have required for my sister to do even the most basic tasks, and to assimilate back into a “regular” childhood. But back then, I only knew that she often seemed sad and that she was easily overwhelmed in social situations. When other kids criticized or questioned her for crying, I would become enraged. I made sure that everyone knew I was on her side, that to mess with her meant facing me.
When I was seven and Chelsea was nine, she desperately wanted to go to French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, a famous sleepaway camp that drew theater kids from around the world. I didn’t sing or dance or act, but there was no question in my mind that if Chelsea was going, I would go too. And so, we boarded the bus to Upstate New York and waved goodbye to our parents through the window. As the bus began to pull away, my sister started sobbing beside me. I remember this moment so vividly: I was smiling and waving at my mom and dad, and then Chelsea began to cry. A moment later, I did too. What I remember most is that I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t feeling sad to say goodbye to my parents or scared to be away from home. But my sister’s pain was my pain. And I couldn’t see her cry without shedding tears myself.
Today, my sister is a freshman in college. She’s healthy and happy and has a wide circle of good friends. From the outside, it appears the suffering she’s endured because of that childhood illness has finally come to an end. I, on the other hand, still sometimes find myself struggling in the wake of it.
It’s been thirteen years since my sister went into the hospital, thirteen years since my parents sat at her bedside, praying for her life while on the other side of town, my grandmother “goblessed” me in my bedroom. But for my family, there remain wounds from that ordeal that have yet to fully heal, traumas that have shaped the way we treat and react to each other. It can be very difficult to recognize, let alone challenge, the stories we tell ourselves to justify our patterns of behavior, our reactions and impulses. And it’s only just now that I’m beginning to examine my own story as it has previously been told to me and as I have continued to tell it to myself.
At sixteen, I can look back and understand how after believing they might lose her, my parents would treat my sister with a kind of reverence and concern in the years that followed, even if they didn’t do so consciously. As a child, though, I saw only that my sister was treated differently than I was, and I interpreted that to mean that she was simply more lovable, and therefore more loved. I can recognize too how my sister, as she began to establish her own identity and seek her own autonomy, might need, at least for a time, to establish boundaries between herself and the little sister who was always at her side. But there were times when she was with her new friends that I felt deliberately excluded, which made me feel angry and unappreciated and hurt.
Healing is a long and often incremental process. When my sister got sick, I was too young to understand the significance of the trauma my family experienced, but I was no less enmeshed in it, no less affected. My own sense of identity was shaped around being my sister’s protector. If I thought of myself as a savior, I didn’t have to confront the feelings of abandonment and unworthiness that resulted from my underlying belief that I was somehow less important than my sister.
Today, I’m working to construct a new narrative, one in which I stand at the center of my own story, no longer defining myself by the relationships I’ve had or the roles I’ve tried to play—sister, daughter, savior, saint. We all have experiences that have colored our perspectives and molded our belief systems, but these don’t have to be the whole story. Instead, they can stand as a prologue, a brief passage before the real story, which is not so much about what happened to us but about what we learned from it and where we went after it and who we loved along the way.
Phoebe Backer is a student at Friends Seminary in New York City. She dances competitive hip hop, scuba dives with sharks, and loves surfing and wakeboarding. She loves to travel, especially to Australia. From an early age she has been involved in her community and related activities. She is currently a member of the Robin Hood Teen Council and her whole family is deeply involved in community service.
My sister was in the hospital for two months, and during that time I lived with relatives. At the time, I could not know how serious my sister’s condition was or how terrifying and traumatic the experience was for my parents. When I was older, I would learn that the chances of Chelsea surviving had been slim to none, that every day my mother and father lived with a sense of dread and desperation. Miraculously, my sister pulled through. When it came to recovery, though, she still had a long road ahead of her. She started at a local rehabilitation center, where they helped her learn to blink and chew, then walk and talk. All the milestones she had, at five, passed long ago, now had to be relearned. Of course, I didn’t have any sense of the challenges and hardships my sister had ahead of her. I was just happy to have her home, and to be with my family again.
My sister’s road to recovery was slow and often painful. Though I was the younger sister, I began to see myself as her protector. Her illness and rehabilitation had left her in many ways fragile and she struggled to find her place among her peers. Looking back, I recognize the strength it must have required for my sister to do even the most basic tasks, and to assimilate back into a “regular” childhood. But back then, I only knew that she often seemed sad and that she was easily overwhelmed in social situations. When other kids criticized or questioned her for crying, I would become enraged. I made sure that everyone knew I was on her side, that to mess with her meant facing me.
When I was seven and Chelsea was nine, she desperately wanted to go to French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, a famous sleepaway camp that drew theater kids from around the world. I didn’t sing or dance or act, but there was no question in my mind that if Chelsea was going, I would go too. And so, we boarded the bus to Upstate New York and waved goodbye to our parents through the window. As the bus began to pull away, my sister started sobbing beside me. I remember this moment so vividly: I was smiling and waving at my mom and dad, and then Chelsea began to cry. A moment later, I did too. What I remember most is that I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t feeling sad to say goodbye to my parents or scared to be away from home. But my sister’s pain was my pain. And I couldn’t see her cry without shedding tears myself.
Today, my sister is a freshman in college. She’s healthy and happy and has a wide circle of good friends. From the outside, it appears the suffering she’s endured because of that childhood illness has finally come to an end. I, on the other hand, still sometimes find myself struggling in the wake of it.
It’s been thirteen years since my sister went into the hospital, thirteen years since my parents sat at her bedside, praying for her life while on the other side of town, my grandmother “goblessed” me in my bedroom. But for my family, there remain wounds from that ordeal that have yet to fully heal, traumas that have shaped the way we treat and react to each other. It can be very difficult to recognize, let alone challenge, the stories we tell ourselves to justify our patterns of behavior, our reactions and impulses. And it’s only just now that I’m beginning to examine my own story as it has previously been told to me and as I have continued to tell it to myself.
At sixteen, I can look back and understand how after believing they might lose her, my parents would treat my sister with a kind of reverence and concern in the years that followed, even if they didn’t do so consciously. As a child, though, I saw only that my sister was treated differently than I was, and I interpreted that to mean that she was simply more lovable, and therefore more loved. I can recognize too how my sister, as she began to establish her own identity and seek her own autonomy, might need, at least for a time, to establish boundaries between herself and the little sister who was always at her side. But there were times when she was with her new friends that I felt deliberately excluded, which made me feel angry and unappreciated and hurt.
Healing is a long and often incremental process. When my sister got sick, I was too young to understand the significance of the trauma my family experienced, but I was no less enmeshed in it, no less affected. My own sense of identity was shaped around being my sister’s protector. If I thought of myself as a savior, I didn’t have to confront the feelings of abandonment and unworthiness that resulted from my underlying belief that I was somehow less important than my sister.
Today, I’m working to construct a new narrative, one in which I stand at the center of my own story, no longer defining myself by the relationships I’ve had or the roles I’ve tried to play—sister, daughter, savior, saint. We all have experiences that have colored our perspectives and molded our belief systems, but these don’t have to be the whole story. Instead, they can stand as a prologue, a brief passage before the real story, which is not so much about what happened to us but about what we learned from it and where we went after it and who we loved along the way.
Phoebe Backer is a student at Friends Seminary in New York City. She dances competitive hip hop, scuba dives with sharks, and loves surfing and wakeboarding. She loves to travel, especially to Australia. From an early age she has been involved in her community and related activities. She is currently a member of the Robin Hood Teen Council and her whole family is deeply involved in community service.