My Sister Is A Badass

My sister, Dawn, is one-of-a-kind. She is fearlessly honest – voted Most Likely To Tell You How It Is by her high school classmates, she has never put up with anyone’s bullshit. She is bossy, somewhat short-tempered (although that has evened out over time), and has certain expectations about the way things should be done that can at times make her a tad difficult to be around if you are the one not adhering to her standards. She is also a big softie, the tough exterior surrounding a heart of gold. And if she loves you, you are a pretty lucky person.

She takes after our mom in many ways, thus they often butted heads as we were growing up.* When we were kids, Mom could just give me her patented “look” – gritted teeth, eyes glaring – and I would immediately dissolve into tears, because I never wanted to disappoint – the first-born, perfectionist, Type-A trifecta at work. However, when Dawn got “the look,” it only seemed to stoke her stubbornness. She has her own way of looking at the world, her own way of doing things, and has never been afraid to be herself, even if it meant getting in trouble.

I don’t think it was easy being my little sister in our small town. I was a driven, straight-A student, and I’d found my obsessive passion for dance at age 6. Dawn is one of the most intelligent people I know, but it’s not the typical “school smart,” and her tendency to color the sky green and the grass blue (a true kindergarten story) frustrated teachers that always expected her to be more like me. She also danced, but didn’t love it. She was in band, but never learned how to read music. Her biggest successes growing up involved the visual arts (an area which doesn’t mind as much if you color the sky green and the grass blue), but most of that came when she was in high school – which, if you know small towns, means after she’d already been compared to me too many times and been pigeonholed by our differences, rather than celebrated for her particular strengths.

One of her biggest attributes is curiosity. I’m intellectually curious, but Dawn is curious in a hands-on way that has led her to have multiple degrees (B.A. in Studio Art, B.A. in Communications/Theater Emphasis), skill sets, hobbies, and jobs. She’s worked retail with her own custom-framing shop, and also at a convenience store. She’s done art work for a t-shirt printing company, and designed and painted ballet backdrops. She’s built costumes and scenery for stage, bookshelves and cabinets for home. She has directed plays and been the technical director for ballet performances. She found her current career path while pursuing an M.F.A. in Stage Management – and it wasn’t becoming a stage manager; as a graduate assistant she worked as a theater electrician, which involves taking care of all the lighting needs for events in theater spaces. This led her to the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, where she has been the Assistant Master Electrician, the Master Electrician, and has taught lighting-related classes. This school year, in addition to her Master Electrician work, she also served as the interim Production Manager – a job in which having a curious nature and knowledge about many different aspects of things is actually a necessity.

Another of Dawn’s best qualities is her willingness to go the extra mile for those she loves. She did every possible job you can think of in helping me put on ballet productions with Western Oklahoma Ballet Theatre, from box office to lighting design to building scenery to being on stage herself as the most magnificent Mother Ginger you’ve ever seen. Her support and helpfulness continued when I moved to work at Oklahoma City Ballet, including, but not limited to, helping gut and rebuild a studio floor and serving as tech director for performances of the school and summer intensive. In these and so many other ways, both large and small, she has been my rock.

Right now, as I am navigating loss of work, grieving a job I loved, and worrying about next steps in the middle of a pandemic prohibiting me from taking much meaningful action, Dawn has been a constant, and not just in the literal quarantine sense of she’s always in my home. She has been listening if I want to talk, letting me cry without issuing any platitudes, offering her “no BS” insights when appropriate, cooking delicious meals, being quiet while I teach online classes, reading me funny things she runs across on social media, and letting me binge watch original Law & Order episodes without complaint. And she’s done all of this while working and teaching remotely herself.

My sister is a badass. And truly the best.

*Dawn and I also butted heads a lot growing up; I’m saving those stories for another time. 🙂