Transcription
One day my sister and I won't share a last name, and I'm afraid that might be the only thing that was tying us together.
We grew up behind the same picket fence, same front door, shared shampoo bottles, handshakes, and secrets we were afraid to tell mom. There are many versions of me that only exist because she was there helping me grow.
I remember Christmas morning opening our first karaoke machine with plastic microphones in our hands, performing on the old carpet like we were famous. Singing so loud and getting so lost in each other, we forgot we had more presents to open. We forgot there was anything else in the world besides one another.
We made up dances like we were performing for a stadium even when it was just grandma and mom watching from the couch. We fought over who got to shower first like time was running out, like 15 minutes of hot water was worth the war that would come after.
I cherish every moment that I see my sister. Every laugh, every cry, every time she's excited. Because one day she won't come to me. One day she'll walk towards someone else. I'll ask if we can match, and for the first time in my life she will say no.
Because she will be in all white walking down the aisle starting the next chapter of her life and signing for a last name that won't match mine anymore. And it's not about tradition or paperwork or some old-fashioned fear of change. It's that we shared a name before we knew who we were, before we chose anything. It was the first thing that made us a unit, the only thing that reminded the world that she was half of me and I was half of her.
One day the little girl with a microphone who sang off-key with me will be someone's wife, someone's mother, someone with a different last name. And I will clap, and I will smile, and I will be proud, but part of me will grieve the two little girls behind the picket fence who thought we would have each other forever.
Forever used to feel small. It used to fit inside a living room, inside two plastic microphones, and an old carpet. We thought forever was something you could hold, something you could split evenly, half for you, half for me. I guess I didn't know forever could grow up, could put on a white dress, and take our last name.
One day my sister and I won't share a last name. And I think the hardest part won't be watching her become someone new. It will be realizing that no one else on this earth will ever know what it meant to be little at the same time as me.