Storm

Some people have a big family with multiple brothers and sisters and others might have none at all. Well, I do have one incredible sister. Of course, I have not always found her incredible, it changes each day (;

I did not have a sister all my life. The first two years of my life were sister free but the past 17 years were with a sister. At a young age, you cannot quite appreciate the effect of a sister but when you get old enough to create your own life you start to experience the effect of a sister.

Well let me tell you the life my sister and I had and now have. It started when my parents asked 2-years old Nardi how to name her sister. The choice was between Cato or Arlette. I chose Arlette, despite the fact that she herself doesn’t quite like it, I think I made a good choice. That is when all the fun began. When I look at photos from the past my sis and I had a lot of fun and were very nice to each other. We went into the bath together, we tried to braid each other’s hair, we did a lot of dressing up together and gave each other a lot of hugs.

Tough then a time arrive where we started to create our own opinion and got into a lot of fights with each other. It happened a lot that I got annoyed by her doings and started to get a bit aggressive (not actually aggressive like throwing punches though). And maybe you recognize this from your own experience. But when I got mad at my sister she started screaming for my parents. Then I always got in trouble even though my parents didn’t know what was going on. I think this is a classic trick of the youngest child.

This period was also the time my sister and I went on most adventures or had the wildest ideas. Went travelled by train to our grandparents for the first time. When a problem arose on these adventures, I would always come up with a solution and my sister would execute it. That is the main idea of our relationship. It was and still is always me with the ideas and her with the execution. So when I once had the idea of tying a rope to my bike and then riding on a skateboard behind it, my sister had to execute it. This resulted in her breaking her left arm in two places (the idea was great, execution not so much). My sister also still got a big scar on her foot from one of my other great ideas.

After some years I got better at calculating the risks of my ideas and my sister got less hurt because of them. That is when our bond started to improve some more (: When we both got to high school, we also started to create a friendship next to our siblingship (is this even a word?). We started to discuss boys, gossip and alcohol use (whoops don’t drink when you are under 18?!?!). But at this point, we also started to create our own interests. She was more popular among the boys in her high school and I took my education a bit more serious. We went our own paths (so cliché but true).

That is also how it is today. While I’m studying at university in Utrecht doing GSS, she is doing the hospitality study in Maastricht (Hoge Hotelschool). I can tell you know that this is about a 3-hour trip. This means I don’t get to see her that often. She lives on campus and only gets back to my parents during weekends. But during those weekends that she is home, she goes to visit her boyfriend or friends from high school. And when she is just chilling home, I'm gone because of soccer or my friends. So there is not a lot of time we spend together. Though, I can say with confidence that our relationship has reached a new high. We have more in-depth conversations, we understand each other’s issues and we are interested in what the other is doing.

My sister worries about me and my study, since last year it did not turn out well. So she wants to know about things I do with and within Storm and new friends that I’m making. In my turn, I’m super interested in where she lives and her inauguration of her dispute and creating a year club. But I’m also a part of her decision making. It is important to her that her boyfriend is also nice to me, because I’m so important to her.

And then when we do get to see each other, we have the biggest fun and the best conversations. But still, we do get annoyed with each other. I guess that is just part of her being my sister. I just hope for the love of God we will never get so annoyed with each other that we lose contact. So that is something I will fight for to never happen. And if you are reading this and you just cannot relate at all to my relationship with my sister, you're missing out!! Go get to know your sister and be interested in her life but most importantly be a part of her life.