“I needed to thank him for what he does,” she said, as if there were no choice but to have spoken to him that very minute. “It’s not easy work, and I think it’s always best to thank people right when you see them.”
When people ask me, “What’s your sister like?” I think about moments like that. She’s all heart—and all action.
But Barbara’s also a dreamer. On the phone recently, she was going on about plans for a trip we were about to take; I told her, not very sensitively, that I thought she was trying to do too much. She snapped at me and hung up.
At just that moment, a young woman stopped me on the sidewalk to say she loved Sisters First.
“I live in this building with my sister!” she said, pointing across the street. Then, sounding ashamed, she whispered, “We’re in a fight.”
“Hey, me too!” I said. “My sister and I are also in a fight!”
We both laughed, secure in the knowledge that fighting is part of sisterhood. Fortunately, so is making up, and so is being there when it counts most.
Not long after Poppy was born, Barbara and I took a quick trip to Oklahoma to promote our book. As I discovered to my dismay a few hours into the trip, I couldn’t get my breast pump to work. Barbara is handy, a born architect, but even she couldn’t fix the contraption. We had to drive to Babies “R” Us—me wailing about my giant, swollen boobs the whole way—to rent a pump. She was there for me on that uncomfortable day, and I’ve been there for her over the years, too.
I’ve watched as my sister’s heart has been bruised by breakups and was broken when her teenage boyfriend died. When Barbara’s heart hurts, mine does, too. That is a bond that no fight can breach—nails or no nails.
This has proved true even though we’ve taken different paths. In the past decade, I’ve gotten married and had children as she stayed single.
Our differences showed themselves early. As a little girl, I was fascinated with Barbies. I woke up early to play with my Barbies before I left for school. I even—to save time—played with them while on the toilet, the fourth grader’s version of reading the newspaper. My dad bought me a hot-pink DO NOT DISTURB sign with Barbie on it that he put on my bathroom door. I played for hours, creating typically romantic scenarios. My favorites were the torrid love triangles in which Barbie eventually ended up with Ken. Every morning, as the sun rose over suburban Dallas, I managed to cram an entire season’s worth of soap opera drama into that bathroom.
I also loved bridal magazines. I studied the dresses, flower arrangements, and cakes as if I were preparing for a standardized test. The fact that I didn’t marry the first boy I met after I turned eighteen is a miracle—though at twenty-six I was pretty close!
My sister played with the same Barbies and flipped through the same magazines, though in both cases with less enthusiasm than I did. Did she dream of marriage as a little girl? Probably. But as we got older, her ideas about love changed. Her huge heart had room for more than just a man.
In our mid-thirties, I faced constant questions about my sister’s love life—namely, her lack of a spouse. On our book tour, I was struck by how often she was asked when she was getting married and how often I was asked to account for why she wasn’t married yet. She was accomplished in countless ways, and yet no one ever seemed to ask about her life-changing work in Africa.
At one tour stop, in Palo Alto, California, Condoleezza Rice moderated a conversation between Barbara and me. She asked what questions we heard most often.
“I get asked, ‘When is your sister getting married?’” I said. “It’s 2018! Isn’t it time we asked women different questions?”
Condi paused and then said, “I still get asked why I didn’t get married.”
I was appalled. She was the former secretary of state! Shouldn’t we ask her about Russia? Putin? She has been a professor, an author, and a concert pianist. She is a good golfer and loves football. How is it possible that strong, accomplished women are mainly being asked about their love lives?
I believe that love comes when it is supposed to; I saw it happen for my beloved sister when we were on our book tour.
When we arrived in Atlanta, my sister began texting with someone named Craig Coyne. Friends had long been trying to set them up, but every time they got close to an actual encounter, something had kept them from meeting. This day they were supposed to have coffee, but Barbara and I, exhausted from touring, had discovered the hotel’s “welcome bag,” overflowing with Doritos and Pringles. Before we knew it, we’d crawled into the giant bed we were sharing and begun watching a movie—then another movie.
Having eaten nothing but orange-colored food all day, Barbara was in a hotel-room slough of despondency and not eager for the pressure of a first date. Right as she was about to cancel, I told her that she should invite Craig for a casual group drink at the hotel bar that night. A college friend and I were meeting that evening and they could join us. She resisted, but as she was weakened by her Doritos coma, I wore her down.
At the bar downstairs, Barbara went up to three different men asking if they were Craig, only to be told no. The fourth candidate—and to her delight by far the most handsome of all the potential Craigs—was the right one. He sat at our table, and right away it was clear to everyone there that he and Barbara had chemistry.
Earlier that day, Barbara had made me swear that I wouldn’t invite him to our book event, no matter how well the drinks were going. I am usually true to my word. But this was a moment when I took it upon myself to break my promise.
When I asked Craig if he would like to come to our talk that evening, Barbara dealt me a sharp elbow to the ribs. Craig, ignoring my yelp of pain, said he would love to. After we finished our drinks, we headed to the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.
The MJCCA venue seated hundreds of people and it was oversold. Our moderator was Emily Giffin, the Atlanta author of, yes, romantic comedies. No one loves a marriage plot and romance more than Emily Giffin, and she was very happy to learn that Barbara and Craig were on their first date.
While we were onstage talking, Emily told the crowd that Craig was on a blind date with Barbara. Barbara groaned. Craig blushed. Emily doubled down and asked for the spotlight to shine on him sitting in the audience. Fortunately, the tech crew did not know what Craig looked like and put the wrong man in the spotlight’s glare. After the talk, Emily insisted we all take a photo together. “This way when you two get married, you can look at this picture and remember the night you first met!”
Craig and Barbara laughed.
Then, just six months later, they did just that.
They would have waited longer to wed, but my grandmother had just died and they wanted my grandfather to be at the wedding. We held the ceremony that October in Maine, under the changing maple and beech trees. I was thrilled to watch Barbara marry her true love, especially because watching proudly, a blanket over his lap, was our ninety-four-year-old Gampy.
The wedding was intimate, just twenty family members. It took place where Barbara and I played as little girls, pretending the rocks along the coast were pirate ships. My grandfather spent every summer at this place, except when he was fighting in World War II. It was on these same rocks that he had proposed to our Ganny.
The day of the wedding was cold and overcast but beautiful. Mila was the flower girl; Poppy, the ring bearer. Poppy had been given an empty box to prevent her losing the actual rings, and during her entire trip down the aisle she repeatedly gestured toward the box, informing the guests, “It’s a fake! It’s a fake!”