When you love someone, you put them before yourself.

***Beware the Spoilers!***

I am toward the end of Girls in Pants The Third Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares- the third book of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It is the same characters- Lena, Bridget, Carmen, Tibby. This summer is their last one before they go off to college. There is all sorts of trouble with heading off to college: Not wanting to leave home, the disapproval of parents, change, facing your problems. I think I had a connection with Carmen- whose mother has recently remarried and is having another child.

Carmen and I are very different people. Where she is temperamental and complaining, I am timid and accepting. What we do have in common is our desire to make our loved ones happy. Although she loves her mother very much and her mother Christina loves her just as much, Carmen believes Christina will no longer love her once the baby is born. She believes there will not be a place left for her in their family after she leaves college. Her immediate solution was to get into a college close to home instead of the one of her choice.

It reminds me of two things- when my baby sister was born and my relationship with my mom. When my little sister was born, it never came to mind there would ever be a reason my mother would not love me anymore. I guess that is the thing about being a single child(Carmen is a single child- or rather was): Your parent's or parents' attention is more focused on you than when you have siblings. When there is another child in the family, you feel like all the attention will go to the new addition. In my case, I first became a big sister when I was only fifteen months old- obviously not enough time to really think about that sort of thing.

Unlike most teenagers, I have a good relationship with my mom. Not just a mother-daughter relationship, but also a friendship. In the second book, Carmen sacrificed her happiness to let her mother be happy. With my mom, I understand why she is the way she is and I try to help her. Loving someone means sarcificing for them. My sister once said each of us- my family- had a week off(We didn't). Since my dad was not there, my brother, my mom and I decided to split his week. We all came up with different combinations. My final combination was my brother would get 2 days, my mom 4, and me 1. Good, right? Yes, in real life, I would in fact let my mom have that many days and maybe more, because she really needs more than 4 days of relaxation. My point in this paragraph is that when you love someone, you put them before yourself, sacrificing your happiness for their needs.