Chicken, rice, and corn from a can

Disclaimer: this post is dedicated to my baby sister, Pene. It just might get cheesy or sad or personal. If you don't want to hear about it, I suggest you move along.


Usually, I say that I cannot remember life without my sister. I'm here to tell you it's a big, fat lie. But not a horrible one, I don't think. I have exactly one memory from before she was born.

My earliest memory is from when I was about 2 years old (plus some 5 or so months) It was the night my baby sister was born, and actually the only memory I have without her in it.

I have a vivid mental picture of our house in Salt Lake; it's night time, and we are eating dinner. You guessed what's for dinner; chicken, rice, and corn from a can. Nothing too fancy. Just fried chicken, sticky rice, and corn. I don't remember much beyond that, except that my older siblings were there, and I colored a picture. I also remember a man there, who I'm assuming was probably my cousin Tui, who I guess babysat us a lot.

After that, pretty much all my memories involve my sister. We were always the "little girls" and did pretty much everything together. Whether it was bullying the girl next door into letting us play (she had THE coolest toys) and then fervently denying it to our mom, or trying to convince a neighborhood kid that we could get him deported to Canada, we were quite the pair. We fought constantly with each other, but I knew she always had my back.

When I think of how a good sister should be, I usually think of a Jane Austen book. The sisters in her books were usually pretty close to perfect, and always totally devoted to each other. My sister has always been the Jane Austen sister, and I'm so grateful to have her in my life!