Growing up, I was always a little in awe when my mom’s sisters got together. The house I grew up in was almost silent for the first seven years of my life; I was an only child until the arrival of my brother. My mom, however, was the youngest of seven kids– five of whom were girls. They weren’t a really tight bunch. Group gatherings like the kind that stopped me in my tracks happened maybe once a year. But on the rare occasion when they all found themselves in the same room as adults, the back stories and laughter flowed freely. I have no idea what they were like as children, but as grown women, they were amazing to watch: the personalities, the dynamics, the alliances, the tensions. I marveled at how different they all were, and yet how similar.
Some days, I feel like I get to see a little bit of the back story in action here in my own home. The 16 years between my mom and her oldest sibling is almost identical to the age gap between Mary Hannah and Simon. The relationship between the two is clearly completely different than the one she has with Mathaus, who is only a little less than three years younger. And it’s easy to wonder, on my worst days, if my olders and youngers will be close at all, with so much life and experience between them.
And then I will see this:
My 17 year-old taking time out of her life planning and other pursuits to spend unprompted one-on-one time with her very girly, very precocious 4 year-old sister.
She’s careful to find something engaging– fun for them both, something just for them.
Her Doorposts Ruby doll kit, never quite finished but loved enough to be hauled from WA to Asia and now to NC.
They sit and they sew, they talk and they giggle, and in that moment, 13 years doesn’t seem like such an insurmountable obstacle. Down the road, when Mary Hannah is 30 and Birdie 17, or they are 40 and 27, I pray that they can still find these moments, still find these places to connect. I pray that even if distance and circumstance keeps them from coming together except on an annual basis, they can still find their way to one another’s hearts. And I think they will. I think that this is the kind of small, every day love that their future relationship will grow on. I think that they will maybe even have more to pull from in their past than some sisters the perfect 2 years apart who never find the time or desire to connect over something as simple as sewing felt bits for tiny handmade dolls.
I can’t say, of course. No one can. But I look forward to the future, to hearing of their just-the-two-of-us slices of time, and smiling.
Sisters. What a beautiful thing.