To my dear older sister

To my dear older sister,

I have come to understand that the story of us was never meant to be remembered in the clean architecture of timelines or events or factual recollection, but rather in the way certain feelings refused to leave the room after the moment had ended, in the way your voice could fill an entire house with instruction or irritation or something that resembled love even on the days when neither of us had the vocabulary for it, and in the way I learned, almost subconsciously, that my life would always tilt slightly in the direction of your footsteps, as if gravity had quietly decided that you were the one constant it could rely on.

And when I think back to our childhood, it comes not in images but in atmospheres, those heavy-limbed afternoons where the sunlight burned against the kitchen floor and we did not yet understand that childhood was something that would end, or those sharp-edged mornings when your frustration pierced the air like something metallic and unavoidable, or the long quiet stretches between our arguments when I felt you watching over me even when you pretended not to, because that was the arrangement, unspoken but absolute: you would lead, and I would follow, sometimes willingly, sometimes dragged along by the force of your conviction.

There were years when you frightened me with your intensity and years when you saved me with that very same intensity, because you never did anything halfway, not anger, not loyalty, not the strange maternal instinct you carried even as a child, an instinct you did not choose, an instinct handed to you by circumstance and birth order and the invisible expectations placed on eldest daughters long before they understand that the role was written for them without their consent.

I remember the bakery days or at least I remember the outline of them, the exhaustion hovering over Mom like a second body she didn’t have the strength to carry, the four of us tumbling into the car with varying degrees of consciousness, and you, always you, the one who noticed the things no one else had the energy to see, the one who lifted me out of the car not because you were told to or thanked for it, but because some quiet part of you understood that childhood was not equal and that you had been handed a portion of responsibility that would shape the architecture of your entire life, and you carried it as if it were simply a fact of nature, unavoidable and familiar.

And while I cannot recall the physical sensation of being held in your arms, I remember the revelation of learning the story years later, the way it suddenly explained so much about who you were, who you became, who you tried so hard not to be, and who you eventually allowed yourself to grow into, because there is something profoundly moving about realizing that the first love you ever received was from a sibling who did not yet understand what love demanded, only that it demanded something from her and she answered without hesitation.

We grew older in ways that were not always graceful, unraveling and reforming ourselves in different rooms, learning how to step away from the roles that had defined us and then, strangely, returning to them in adulthood with a kind of forgiveness we did not possess as children.
You learned how to put down the burdens that were never meant to be yours and I learned, slowly, clumsily, what it meant to stand on my own two feet instead of waiting for you to turn back and guide me.

But what I did not expect was how much of you would remain in the foundation of my life, not the details or the arguments or the slammed doors, but the deeper truth underneath them, the truth that you, without ever meaning to, taught me what it means to be shaped by another person, to be steadied by them, to be pushed, challenged, protected, terrified, comforted, and ultimately understood.

And now I watch you settling into the next part of your life, not as a departure but as an emergence, as a widening of the space around you, as a gentle but unstoppable unfolding of everything you fought to become, and I realize that whatever comes next is not a replacement for the life you’ve lived but a continuation of the way you have always moved: with determination, with caution, with fire, with tenderness that you hide until it spills out, uncontrollable, in the exact moment someone needs it most.

You are stepping into a future that will ask you to receive with the same openness you once gave without question, and I know that this will not always be easy for you, not because you are unwilling, but because you have spent so much of your life being the one who carried others and it takes time to learn how to let yourself be carried, not as a burden but as a human being who deserves rest, who deserves partnership, who deserves the kind of love that arrives without demanding anything in return.

And perhaps this is what moves me most: the idea that you are finally being met where you stand, not above or below, not as caretaker or protector or force of nature, but as a woman in her full complexity, her earned strength, her quiet hope, and her stubborn insistence on surviving everything that tried to hold her down.

I do not know what your future holds and I do not pretend to, but I know this:
you are stepping toward it with a steadiness you forged yourself,
with a softness you once believed was weakness,
with a courage you mistake for routine,
and with a heart that, despite everything, still opens, still trusts, still learns how to love in ways that are entirely your own.

And if I am moved to tears when I think of you, it is not because I am mourning anything we have left behind, but because I am witnessing the rare moment when a person steps wholly into herself, when the years of carrying others finally yield to a season where she is allowed — at last — to be carried too.

To my dear older sister.