my baby sister turned sixteen. oh my, she’s growing up so quickly. mum and I reminisced the younger days of andrea as we drove around town after work, gathering party supplies. we missed the baby dow* (which isn’t her real name—that’s andrea**—, but what we’ve been calling her since she was a babe), the toddler dow, and the child dow. she was the most adorable kid, with chubby legs and arms, big belly, and oh-so pinchable cheeks. even at the age of 2, she could finish a bowl of instant noodles all by herself.
people are often surprised at how close dow and I are— afterall we are nine years apart. I mean, when I was moving out for the first time and going to university, she was busy learning arithmetic; when I met daniel and fell in love, she wasn’t even going through puberty yet; when I was stressed about planning a wedding, she was stressed about starting highschool without her childhood friends. we’ve always been in different parts of life, but despite the age difference, andrea is my best friend and teen confidante of my married-career woman woes; I, in turn, do have to listen to all her teen drama (and there’s quite a lot!).
as per family tradition, the birthday person chooses where to go out for dinner; my sister opted for all-stars, thus dinner consisted of 100 wings, 2 baskets of fries, 5 pieces of garlic bread, and 1 plate of nachos shared among eight people.
people are often surprised at how close dow and I are— afterall we are nine years apart. I mean, when I was moving out for the first time and going to university, she was busy learning arithmetic; when I met daniel and fell in love, she wasn’t even going through puberty yet; when I was stressed about planning a wedding, she was stressed about starting highschool without her childhood friends. we’ve always been in different parts of life, but despite the age difference, andrea is my best friend and teen confidante of my married-career woman woes; I, in turn, do have to listen to all her teen drama (and there’s quite a lot!).
as per family tradition, the birthday person chooses where to go out for dinner; my sister opted for all-stars, thus dinner consisted of 100 wings, 2 baskets of fries, 5 pieces of garlic bread, and 1 plate of nachos shared among eight people.
* though being the biggest babe to pop out of mum, andrea was very small at the early stages of her babyhood due to an allergy to her milk formula. my mum nicknamed her ‘dow-dow’, which means pea in cantonese, because she was as small as one. the name stuck. many of my friends, and all my family, still refer to her as dow-dow (or dow, for short).
** andrea was my idea!
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