Dear Krista,

"The road is long,
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where
But I am strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.

So on we go
His welfare is my concern
No burden is he to bear
We'll get there
For I know he will not encumber me
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.

If I'm laden at all
I'm laden with sadness
That everyone's heart
Is not filled with gladness
Of love for one another

Thank you, Lord
Said it's a long...
I said it's a long...
Heyyy, it's a long, hard road
From which there is no return
While we're on the way to there
Why not share?
And the load
Doesn't weigh, doesn't weigh me down at all
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother."
~Donny Hathaway

Tenderness in unusual places, like the hard baker turning soft with
unexpected empathetic conversation, the bus riders helping each other haul their
groceries to the bus stop, and the cold, elderly neighbor holding her neighbor's
grandchild in a tight embrace as she combs her fingers through his baby-soft
hair. Two older sisters reminisced on the porch. They held each other's shoulder gracefully, smiling. Two sisters played inside the house. I heard them tumbling their laughter over each other and was reminded of the games Krista and I used to play with taaaaaallll afternoons smoothed in front of us like an endless spread of jelly.

"Murder in the Dark." What a thing to call a basically glorified, night-time hide-and-seek we used to play with our cousins and friends those summers and winters past. Krista was always sacrificing her room for the game and my best friend, Sarah, and I managed to find the best hiding places in her dresser drawers, hanging from her closet doors, or tucked in her clothes baskets. In addition to late-night wild games, we would ride our bikes a dozen times up and down the gravel road to Bitsy's (grandma's) house catching leaves in our hands as we whipped down the steep hills. Sometimes we took walks in the woods pretending we were explorers lost in the wilderness with only berries and sticks to fill our bellies. The actual camping experiences we attemtped were limited to the tent we set up 5 feet from the house. We never actually spent the night in it, we would just spend days reading or talking. When we came home from our beach vacation to find the tent in tatters from a violent thunderstorm, we were devastated.As you grow up you begin to realize the need for personal time. When you're young though, being alone is equated with being bored. Krista and I spent a lot of time together to allay the boredom until we became so sick of each other we would begin to hurl insults. Krista always bounced back. Her coping skills have always been highly developed.

High school, I'm convinced, is the worst place for sisters. Deciding everything about that place was too cool for me, I immediately began my angsty decent into eliminating all things lame from my life, which unfortunately included my poor sister. Such was our fate where our thunderstorm house-tents became the space between us that grew wider with the passing days and my make-up inhibitions were probably as confusing to me as to her.

The year I left for Costa Rica I never realized how much I missed her until she spent a month with me in those wild mountains. We laughed one night as we tried to sleep squished on the tiny cot big enough for perhaps one medium-sized person comfortably. We thought of the trips when we used to fight in the giant king-sized beds of hotels, making great walls between us with pillows and blankets.

We've grown closer since that sleepover but I still pushed her into quiet corners where she wasn't as valued as she should have been. Never so close did we become as this past autumn when I lived at home in a funk, working and trying to apply to schools. The cold air that changed the vibrancy of nature also seemed to change the vibrancy of us. Without hesitancy, she would invite me to go bowling with her large group of high school friends who would inevitably include me in all their shenanigans. Gathered in the kitchen around bagels, cheesy things, chocolate, sodas, and loud voices, they would invite me to play "Muder in the Dark." Her band concerts were my nights out. She never thought twice about sitting with me on the bleachers when the chorus would take their turn and all her friends would be sitting two rows below us. Some evenings I would pounce on her bed and we would lay there side-by-side talking, residual of our "camping" days. She drove us to the movies where we would giggle in the plush seats, now big enough to seat the both of us. Sometimes dinners would proceed at some little restaurant. One day she shared a poem with me she wrote about the stars and I shared a painting I made about a poem. Before I came to the Virgin Islands, we created together, sitting bunched on her floor with paints and glues, a painting and poem as a gift to someone and a symbolic good-bye to one eventful epoch of our sisterhood.One day we bought a book of Clarinet/Piano duets and spent hours learning the unusally touching melodies. The two instruments overtop one another were fitting for her low, humble but strong personality and my small yet perhaps too loud one that had come to characterize our relationship. When I went back to college in the spring I tried to remember to bring the book home but we never practiced as much as that fall when we'd both changed colors.

We're about to be something like a million miles apart (well not quite). She's leaving in a few days for Zambia to serve in a girls' school. I'll be here in these islands with the ghosts of us manifested in the unusual tenderness between strangers and the sisters still sharing rooms together. The thought of so much time apart jerks those unexpected tears right out of my head. What turns lie in our love? What games will we play next summer back in our rooms after weathered travels? All I know is she ain't heavy, she's my sister.

Dear Krista, you ain't heavy, you're my sister.