Sisters and new starts

My younger sister enjoys the unfortunate distinction of starring in many of my essays. She could fairly accuse me of having a caricaturist's touch; I alternately stress her intense sense of justice, her night owl tendencies, her love of chocolate. My most blatant appropriation of her life was probably my application essay for the University of Chicago, in which I related how I managed, with one comment, to turn her off jelly for four years. I got in. (Thanks, Jackie.)

The recent 400-mile road trip we took to Kentucky provides me with another occasion for such written reflection. It was mid-August, with temperatures in the mid-90s. We took turns driving. When I drove, she teased me about not going fast enough; when she drove, she ribbed me about not being able to work an iPod. We sang along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and developed matching aches in previously undiscovered bodily regions. There's nothing like 14 hours of claustrophobic togetherness for getting to know someone. That weekend, I got to rediscover my sister.

Jackie is three years younger than me. I left home for a gap year in Italy as she began her sophomore year of high school. Once I entered Princeton, we rarely saw each other. We never fought much but also never had the opportunity to become close friends. This August, though, she had returned from a year in Ecuador and was preparing to begin at Wellesley College, and the times, they were a changin'.

Being older still has its advantages, of course, and my time as a Princeton RCA also contributes significantly to my authority. On college survival questions along the lines of living with a roommate, finding good study spaces and the best places to meet boys, she was willing to listen. My opinion also counted when we went shopping for everything she might need this fall, from cleaning supplies to bed linens to sweaters to formal dresses.

But as I listened to stories from her year abroad for the first time, I had to admit I had a lot to learn. My sister had ridden buses through the warren-like calles of Quito, bargained with indigenous vendors at street markets, jumped off cliffs into rivers and gotten eaten alive by Amazon mosquitoes. She got sunburned in the Galapagos and traveled to areas that required her to take malaria medication for weeks before and after. She adjusted to life with several different foreign families, mastered the language, even aided exchange student friends of hers through difficult times. She's come back so savvy and sure of herself that I expect her to start bossing me around. Maybe it's about time.

My sister is transitioning from one amazing experience to another. She's starting something new and exciting, and I'm more than a little jealous. She has four years ahead of her to make of college what she will; I'm looking back on three years, wondering what I would do differently if I could begin again. She doesn't need my nostalgia parading as wisdom to guide her on her way. My regrets should serve only to motivate her, so that she may have as few regrets as possible three years from now. She was four years old at the time of the jelly incident. She's old enough now to know that what I say isn't always true for her.

Somewhere between Charleston and Flatwoods, W. Va., on the way home, I asked her if she minded that I wrote about her so often. "Not so much," she told me, "because in the end, Emily, it's always really about you." Perhaps she's right. And certainly this time, on this trip, I'm happy to be there in the background as she begins her college journey. Emily Stolzenberg is a German major from Morgantown, W. Va. She can be reached at estolzen@princeton.edu.