A Moment Turns To A Memory, But A Memory Is A Moment You Can Always Look Back On.

I am five years old and my sister cuts my hair, with craft scissors in an old cracked mirror. We laugh, she says it looks great, so I do the same to her, our reflections must relate.  

I am eight years old and we play in the sun, in the rain and snow and sleet, once we’ve dried off, Mom makes our favorite treat. We play with our dolls in the playroom we make dances to old music on the CD player, videos we’ll look back on and smile.  We dress in Dad’s clothes and stuff pillows in the open space, a wrestling match in the living room, where some sort of fight will bloom. But Mom will tell us to hug, and we’ll ask Dad to kill the bug, and everything will be okay again. We’ll have a movie night on the old stained rug.  

We continue to grow, Dad’s clothes aren’t so big now, we don’t stuff his shirts with pillows, and Mom’s heels almost fit our feet, and the world feels a little different now.

I am eleven years old and my sister braids my hair, “hold still,” she tells me, so I do, because whatever she says, it must be true.  

I am fourteen years old and I cry in my room. Mom has cancer now, I don’t know what to do.  

But my sister is there, she plays with my hair.

I am seventeen years old, Mom is okay now. My sister has moved out, her room is different than before. It’s bare, blue, nothing new. I watch movies by myself now.  

Dad gives his extra shirts to me, I sleep in them, they fit me just perfectly. The playroom now has a TV and a couch, no dolls or books or rainbow balloons, it’s just me now, in an old repainted room.

A year later and I am eighteen, my sister has moved back home into an old house out on a farm, College was too cold she says. She doesn’t know, but so was the house without her here. It’s so nice to be warm again.  

I’m graduating now, my sister curls my hair, with a hot metal wand, in our parent's bathroom mirror. We reminisce, about a childhood we both miss, she says I look beautiful.  

I am twenty years old and my sister is 23. I guess we grew up as most kids do.  

Time is an inevitable thing, but I'm glad I got to do it with you.

I feel sorry for people without sisters, how hollow their childhoods must have been 

I love my sister dearly, like a notebook and my favorite pen.

When the world feels cold and my sister is not down the hall, I imagine a cold winter morning, the first snow of the season. Our tiny fingers peeking through the blinds 

as we chimed, “let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” And so we did, mom helped us with our snow pants and Dad did our gloves. We built a snowman in the yard, with an orange for a nose and pinecones for ears, we decorated him with our snow gear. We dragged each other around with a sled and a rope, racing down the hill, past our snow angels, and through the cold winter chill. My sister grabbed the lemon juice from the fridge, and we made ice cones in the shape of spheres, “yellow snow” she giggled, and we laughed, and it was so, so cold 

but we were so very warm next to each other.  

The sunset, we left our boots by the back door and said goodbye to Mr. Snowman, Mom made hot chocolate, Dad cooked breakfast for dinner, we snuggled by the fireplace 

watching “A Christmas Story," smiling, because Santa was coming, wasn’t he? On Christmas Eve, we slept together. We always slept together, our little bodies tired and restless, he’d be here soon, the magic would linger in the living room, “don’t get up without me” I'd made her promise, our pinkies interlaced, and she never did get up without me, she always kept her promise.  

Christmas looks different now, I sleep alone in my bedroom, everyone has someone, but it doesn’t make me sad. I think that’s who I was born to be, an observer of the universe, 

a listener, the silent watcher.  

I’m twenty and the snow falls so gracefully, we don’t play in it, because it’s too cold 

and my sister doesn’t live here anymore, and soon I won’t live here either. But when I look at the flakes for too long, I can almost see us making a snowman, I can almost hear our giggles, and the moment feels as though it could last forever.  

A moment turns to a memory, but a memory is a moment you can always look back on.  

I stare out the window, on Christmas Eve, in my empty bedroom, and I smile because of how lucky I was to grow up with my sister.