“I have had many female inspirations in my life so far, including my theater teacher, my mother, and an amazing nurse who helped me in the hospital when I tore my shoulder ligament. But my biggest inspiration is, without question, my sister. She moved to our house when she was eight years old because her mother suffers from mental illness plus an early head injury. I was only a baby at the time, so I always remember her with us, but sometimes she will tell me stories about her other life, when she was a little girl living in Portland, and what it was like with her mother then. She said mostly it was nice, but when her mother wasn’t well, she’d start knitting blankets all the time, or ask Francie what her name was. Or once, her mother (my aunt) handed her a half-opened jar of pickles to give as a present at a birthday party. My sister hid it under the stairs and went to the party without anything.
“My mother always took me shopping before friends’ birthday parties. We went to toy stores together, and as we browsed the aisles, she asked me what I’d like to get for my friend, and sometimes I’d even get something too.
“My sister laughs when I tell her she’s my hero. She even snorts a little, like it’s not true.
“She’s fun, and easy to be with, and I’ve never seen her do anything truly worrisome, but soon after she arrived at our house, when I was a very little baby, she asked our mom to put a lock on her door. Not a regular lock from the inside, for privacy, but on the outside. To lock her in. When our mom asked why, she said she just wanted to feel safe in there. She said that sometimes she sleepwalked and she didn’t want to leave the room in the middle of the night and fall down the stairs, though no one had ever seen anything close to that happen. Our mom didn’t like it, but she ended up buying the lock because Francie doesn’t ask for much. For years, Mom was the one who opened her door up in the morning, but when I was old enough and had to get up earliest for school, it became my job to unlock Francie from her bedroom. Every morning my alarm would ring, I’d get out of bed, and the first thing I’d do would be to walk over to her door and turn the little locking device so that she could come out.
“I can’t say I understand why she wanted that. But it was an honor to release her. To be the one to unlock the door in the morning, and return her to our family and daily life. My mother always thought it was upsetting, and worried, but Francie seemed happy about it, and I have always liked that I was given such an important task.
“I also think of college like a door you have to unlock. Inside are so many mysteries about the world, and I am excited to take on that job, the job of opening up one of those doors and seeing what’s inside. We are all locked in rooms in different ways, and part of growing up is finding different kinds of keys, and meeting the people who will help free you. I feel my experience with my sister has opened me up already to many of the ways I am lucky in the world. I want to learn all I can, and open all I can, and make my parents, and my sister, proud.”