A note for my sister and a poem

Dear Charlotte,

Carly was baptized on Saturday.  After some stress and movie trouble and programs printed wrong twice in a row, it went off without a hitch.  Carly wore a lovely white dress which you made and she positively glowed.  I've never been hugged so tight by the starfish child as when she came to me out of the font.

When I took you to the airport, a most odious task I always dread because it means you are leaving, you thanked me for letting you participate in Carly's baptism and life in general.  It caught me off guard, I'm sure you noticed.  Because, I can't image it any other way.  If anything, I wish I had you more.  More tickling and laughing and comforting and loving.  Because you give all that you have so freely.  Because you make way and make time and make efforts beyond what's minimally required by ties of "family".  Because I cannot remember a time in my life where I have not admired you.  Although perhaps you doubted that was true when I refused to listen, kept a messy room despite your efforts to keep our shared space clean, and generally annoyed you.  That's what baby sisters do, I think.  But, I digress.

I wrote this little poem for you tonight.  Perhaps not great literature and it certainly doesn't rhyme, but it says what's in my heart right now, this moment.  It says, it means, I love you.  I thank you.  I miss you.


Aunt Charlotte
She came to me on gossamer wings

All velvet skin and dew kissed eyes

And I loved her.

And I held her close.

And I called her mine;

Even though she did not grow inside this belly

She has always lived inside this heart.

And I called her yours

Because you are my sister and friend

My guide and sage;

And we held her close.

Some bonds are born outside the body

Nurtured, fed, tickled into being.

Some begin the moment we meet,

Skin against skin;

But others, the most important,

Began long before,

Before memory, before bodies, before being.

And because you are my sister and friend,

Ours is that old kind of bond;

Satin ribbon, woven lace, steel.

I choose you, as you chose me,

And together she is ours.

Love,

Me