day 4, to my sister

Day 4. Your sibling

Chloe,

When I think about you driving around in my old car, the car that was our parents' first–the first car that could stick itself to the bulletin board of your memory–I'm terrified. I trust you (most times). I know you'll be carefully. I know that you're too excited for your future and too smart and too determined to let something come in the way of that. You'll drive the speed limit. Mostly. But I have come to hate every driver passing through Western Ohio. I hate anyone on the same roads as you, and I worry about what could happen to you.

I worry about my not being there for you. No one in the world feels closer to me, even when I'm literally more thousands of miles away from you than I know how to picture or illustrate. I worry that it will make you resent me, because there's not a step of my life that you've missed. I'm sorry. But then, it had to be one of us–the older, the first to go.

You're getting so close now, too. Two years and you'll be figuring out what you want to do with yourself–then changing it, having your first identity crisis, baking a lot of cookies and scaring our parents with more radical majors. We're a lot alike...

...but not too much alike. I'm amazed by your sureness. You have already, at only 15, set yourself toward your goals: volunteering in classrooms, tutoring, setting yourself up perfectly for the teaching career you want. You're amazing with children, and I envy you that. You have an incredible ease around people, at any age, that I haven't even been able to fake.

You're amazing with math as well, and this is something that is getting to the point of embarrassment. When I was first starting college, I would get the occasional phone call from you, asking for help with your homework. That stopped quickly (when you realized that I had no clue what I was talking about and spent much more time playing Mario on my calculator than doing my graphing homework). Now, it may be only a few months before I'm calling you, bashing my head against the dinner table and asking you to teach my how to do statistics. Better yet: maybe I'll send YOU to math camp in my place?

When I think about the future, the bits I get most excited for are seeing you become even cooler. I already think about what I want to get you for graduation or how I want your first visit to Joe and my next apartment to go about. I measure time in terms of my distance from you and the spaces between seeing you.

I want to come home and gorge myself on love stories with you–Pride and Prejudice, Love Actually, A Good Year. I miss our Fun-For-Everyone-but-Dad movie days. I want to bake cookies and brownies and not yell at your or judge myself for eating most of the batter before it makes its way to the oven.

I love you, and I'll see you not too long from now–you and your gorgeous no-braces face.

Love you infinity,
Meg

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