National Sister’s Day
Sisters test you in ways that allow for a million mistakes and second chances that you aren’t afforded with strangers. Sisterhood is not all joy and companionship, but the struggle of constant conflict and confrontation is practice in conflict resolution and near-constant empathy. Having sisters has made me a better person.
One of the longest relationships of my adult life has been with my pillow sham. It has a light green border, a thin darker green border inside that, and flowers with pink, orange, and yellow petals in clusters around its white center. The back is entirely green with ties long enough to make proper little bows. I think my mom bought it from the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue when my younger sisters and I got our own rooms. I was ecstatic. Finally, my own space, my own desk, my own everything. And a new pillow sham that matched my bed sheets too! I also wanted to paint the walls pink.
The first night I ever spent alone, I didn’t sleep with my head where my pillow was. One of my sisters, Mia, and I propped open our doors and talked to one another across the hall (our other sister was still sleeping in a crib in our parents’ room so she couldn’t participate). We were both scared of the dark, but neither of us wanted to admit it. I hadn’t realized that having my own room meant being alone in the dark. This went on for two weeks; my sister and I stumbled around school like zombies from lack of sleep before my parents gave us an ultimatum. We could move back into the same room, or we had to sleep with the doors closed. I stubbornly refused to give up my own room, so the doors were closed.
No one had prepared me for how much larger the dark can be when you’re alone. I lay flat on my back and held my breath. I had a lot of ideas about what rules the monsters in my head had to follow in order to get me. If I didn’t move or make a sound, then they wouldn’t know I was there. That worked for two nights before my eyes started playing tricks on me. As they adjusted to the dark, I imagined lines cracking up the walls and spreading around the ceiling. The cracks became a huge problem for me. I couldn't stop seeing them. I took to lying on my side and staring intensely at my decorative pillow sham. My mom had rested the pillow against the wall next to my bed so that if I were lying down, it was beside my head. My new rules were: if I couldn’t see the cracks, the cracks couldn’t spread closer to me. I followed this rule religiously, and every night, I fell asleep to a garden green border, a thin darker green border, and pink petaled flowers. But what really gave me the courage to fall asleep was the comfort that my sister had a matching one right across the hall. It sits in that same position now, almost twenty years later, in my college apartment.
Now, I have the same pillow sham, but with new fears and a shared room. I still love green and pink, and when I think about my ideal wedding, those are the colors I want to see my sisters in when I walk down the aisle. When we talked about our weddings across the hall as kids, we would imagine the most spectacular locations like Antarctica or a pirate ship in the middle of the Atlantic. I wanted to marry a boy from school named Trevor, and my sister wanted to marry her stuffed giraffe.
I was an only child for just eighteen months before my sister arrived, but I imagine that it was a lonely time. My dad was a new resident at our local hospital, and my mom was on maternity leave from her own residency with two young children, so I got to watch too much Finding Nemo. But once my sister was old enough to play with me, I never watched it again.
I think I’m still a little scared of the dark, but it's less about cracks in the wall and more about paths towards the future. I know better than to look away now because I still have my pink and green pillow sham, my sisters. My sisters are my greatest strength when I need extra confidence, doubt myself, or just need to pick a fight. They taught me how to forge sisterhood with the other incredible women in my life, and I could not be more grateful for any gift in this world. National Sister Day allows us to celebrate these relationships with extra care and intentional love. I hope you are lucky enough to have a sister or to create sisterhood for yourself.
Her Nexx Chapter invites you to join our Community where women from around the world are connecting, exploring, and transforming lives.
The Future of Connection for Women
I’m Meghan. I’m an undergraduate English major at UCLA, and I’m from Santa Rosa, California! I’ve always loved reading and writing and feel very lucky to have the opportunity to study what I’m passionate about and do so in Los Angeles. My favorite show to watch is Modern Family, and I love listening to “The Broski Report.” I grew up swimming and playing water polo, and I’ve recently started hot yoga, which I really enjoy. Tatsu Ramen is the best place to eat in LA; I love Taylor Swift, specifically the vault tracks from 1989; and my friends and I always celebrate important events like birthdays or tests by driving up and down Sunset when it’s dark, and all the billboards are on.
