Missing You

When you're lucky enough to grow up with siblings who you are very close with, inevitably, one day you will no longer be that close...physically, anyway. One day, you will no longer be sharing a room, getting in trouble for talking and laughing when you're supposed to be asleep, you won't be waking up together at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning to run downstairs in your thermal pajamas to see what Santa brought and see who got the most presents...neatly stacking piles of Hers, His and Hers, you won't be eating oatmeal together every morning and meatloaf or chicken or meatballs together at night, you won't be riding your big wheels around the block, or your bikes across town even though your mother forbade you to go that far. You won't be watching Little House On The Prairie in bean bags after school, or assembling your above ground pool in your Brooklyn backyard for the first swim of the summer. You won't be making Rice Krispie treats, or walking together to the corner in the freezing cold to catch the school bus, you won't be fighting over whatever you fought over back then, or playing Asteroids and Pac Man. You won't be watching movies together in the back of your closet, and you won't be making your sister's first pigtails...delicate little flowers that they were, ever again.

These times, although they are forever ingrained in our hearts and memories, have passed. And these people, who are not merely an extension of you, but are an integral part of you, the only people who lived what you lived and who know what you know, are torn from you...simply due to the natural course of life.... living in different cities, different states, each in our own homes, instead of under the one roof where our bonds were built. And we have to accept this, because this is how it's meant to be.

And life gets busy... with jobs and responsibilities and opportunities that take us away from each other, as we each pursue the paths that we've chosen. And the phone calls get less frequent, and in this current cyber age phone calls are diminished to text messages, and visits are few and far between. And, suddenly, one day it occurrs to you...or you allow it to occur to you, that this person is hardly in your life anymore. And because of this distance that has been allowed to develop, this person that you once shared a room with, who you rode in the back of the car with, who you tossed stuffed animals at at bedtime, this person who crawled across your bedroom floor in stealth mode and popped up next to your bed scaring the crap out of you, this person with whom you ate dinner every night, and whose life formed simultaneously with yours, becomes somewhat of a stranger to you. And even though you know you are still close, it's not close enough anymore.

I realize that it's not the case in all families, as unfathomable as it is to me, but in my world, siblings are the embodiment and epitome of unconditional love, support and acceptance...your allies, your cheerleaders, your confidants, your teammates... they are as joyful as you are in your most shining moments, and as heartbroken as you in your darkest hour... the people you can always turn to, at any time, no matter what, forever, always... and they understand you and "get" you the way no one else quite can. As I write this at home on my couch, a 3 hour drive from my sister and a 3 hour flight from my brother, I still wish we were closer, sharing more meatloaf dinners, seeing each other's faces on Christmas mornings, and just sharing ordinary days.