No Small Thing: A Sister

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about my sister, and maybe the best way is just to start dipping the toes in.

Before life got complexed and challenging, she was simply the person beside me in the beginning. My partner in crime. She appears in so many of my early memories that it’s hard to separate my childhood from her presence in it. She was familiar in the way only a sister can be — constant, close, sometimes comforting, sometimes maddening, always part of the landscape.

When you grow up with one sister, that relationship carries a strange amount of weight. It holds friendship, comparison, irritation, loyalty, distance, history — sometimes all at once. It changes as you change. It means different things depending on which year you’re remembering.

This isn’t the whole story. It’s just my starting point. The first doorway. The first snapshot. The first attempt to say: she was here, in the middle of it, and that made the world of difference.