My first intimation that life with a younger sister would be vastly different from life as an only child came just a week or so after she was born.

Behind my grandparent’s home was a mother-in-law cottage where our family lived the first five years of my life. If you counted the foyer (a linoleum square just big enough for the front door to swing open) and the space at the top of the stairs that became the nursery, you could say, with a more or less straight face, that there were seven rooms, three of which were bedrooms.

My mom set the ironing board up in the archway between the kitchen and living room, so she could iron some of Dad’s pale blue uniform shirts. I stood on the wide, flat arm of our sectional couch, belting out “Old MacDonald” as only a three-year-old can. In other words, singing at the top of my lungs, with no particular attention paid to either melody or lyric. From my point of view, all was right with the world.

“Shh, Diane, you need to be quiet, the baby is sleeping.”

Flabbergasted, I stopped singing mid-Ee-i-o. Excuse me? I thought I had my mother’s full attention, reveling in her appreciation of my gifted vocal abilities. Instead, I had to stop, because that wrinkled little thing (whose own vocal abilities were hardly as developed as mine, except perhaps in the realm of sheer volume) was sleeping? My self-centered little world shattered.

Eventually my family moved out of the cottage into a much roomier home, where I could sing to my heart’s content in my attic bedroom. Our sleeping arrangement, in fact, mirrored the relationship between my sister and me: under the same roof, but worlds apart in temperament, interests and life choices.

While we will never be “sisters of the heart”, we are still sisters by blood, and that does count for something. When necessary, we can work together in relative harmony, doing what needs to be done and then going our separate ways. We can even enjoy one another’s company on family holidays.

Provided, of course, that she doesn’t try to stop me from singing.