Sisters

I've been blue lately.

I recently returned from visiting my sister and her family in North Carolina.

I love to go there but I hate to leave.

Whenever I go there it would be so simple to just... stay.

While my house is my home her house is more like coming home to me.

When I'm there I'm surrounded by memories brought on by countless knick knacks and photographs, strategically placed to invoke historical remembrance.

In one guest room sits the bronzed baby shoes of my sister Judy. Also in there are the gnomes that sat under the library table that my mother used to own.

In the room I slept in, on a small table near a window my eyes fell upon a tiny wooden box with the picture of the Virgin Mary on top. This box sat on my mother's dresser since before the time of my memories began.

Downstairs in the parlor there are about twenty black and white photos sitting atop a piano. All lovingly framed and placed there by my sister's gentle hands. Each time I visit we look at the pictures and talk about long-gone family members. Oddly this was the first time that I ever noticed how much her son, my nephew looks like his father's grandfather. We've always known that her daughter, my niece favors our mother. Seeing my nephew in his paternal grandfather's face was beautiful.

In every room lies the history of her life and mine. Since before mine began, throughout my entire life, people that bind us together and personal belongings that have passed through generations.

I cannot chalk it up to fate because it feels like a bigger thing. We are sisters, forever entwined by the strings of fate, perhaps. But eternally bound by the love that share for each other.