A little sister is born with one hand reaching out, asking Please let me follow u. This is the premise of her life.

Mom and dad were staring at Beautiful baby number one, thinking, Our beautiful baby, we want to give her a friend for her entire life. She’ll learn to share, and learn to lead, All of these good things. Little sister was the idea born out of these loving intentions for beautiful baby.

There are contracts apparently. Contracts we sign before we make contact with blood and oxygen and leaf blowers. Little Sister’s contract says: someone came before you and you were created with them in mind. And she signs.

Big Sister, she signs the contract of an only child.

The implications of this are so far-reaching I couldn’t overstate them:

these two people are bound together by half of the same DNA, yet they came to this planet under entirely different premises. Only child’s life begins as the statement of fact “I’m here.” Little sister’s life begins as the statement of fact “You’re here so I’m here.”

Little sister naturally (contractually) reaches. For Only child’s clothes, and friends, and laughter, and snacks, and More than everything, for Only child’s hand to lead her into the playground, into the dance class, into the entire world. This is how a little sister lives out the questions she was born to ask, will u share, will you lead, will u please make sure I can follow you wherever so I can be your friend

An only child, naturally (contractually) bounces first into everything. No one is in front of her. Why would it occur to her to look behind

There are exceptions to this set up of course there are, you’ve seen them. This can be explained by the fine print.

Some only children sign contracts with fine print that states: on the condition that some body else comes after you, you will accept and eventually love being squeezed and pressed into a different shape than the one you came out being.

The only children with this fine print look at the chubby wide open fingers of Alien baby number two and can learn to adore the shape she’s asking them to climb into, the shape of a big sister. They learn how to bounce on forward with their necks turned the opposite direction, so their eyes can watch out for their little sisters wobbling on behind them.

The other only children, they might try to let themselves be squeezed and pressed, they might try to adore this whole thing, but they can’t help it, they’re just uncomfortable. Their lives become hyphenated, filled with all sorts of divisions, clarifications, restrictions, indicating both the missing and implied elements of their contracts.

The little sister to an uncomfortable Only-child-Big-sister asks and reaches, and would hungrily take a reluctant yes or an emphatic NO!!!! in response. she wouldn’t mind if her hand was slapped away or gripped so tight. It wouldn’t matter to her because any of these would have Big sister facing her direction. But there’s no response, no touch or refusal to touch. her Only-child-Big-sister is bouncing on forward.

People observing might feel that the Only-child-Big-sister is doing things wrong. Her little sister would tearily agree, because the contract of her existence isn’t holding up. It’s impossible for Little sister to enter a world where Big sister is not. and apparently, Big sister is not. What does this make Little sister now? Should she even exist? Should she slice her self up into hyphens too maybe?

Even if she wanted to (which she does since she’s so inclined to copy), I don’t think she could. an Only-child-Little-sister is unthinkable: I don’t know how to think that up.

but who can blame either of them, really who can blame anyone at all. maybe we should instead ask, is there anything that needs to be accounted for via blaming?

There’s not, as much as our sadness wants us to blame things, there’s no injustice in the neutral trajectory of two people with incompatible contracts bumping into and off of one another, and fated by the gravitational pull of their DNA to do so again and again and again.

the more important question to ask is what happened with these only children’s fine print? If it was written at the bottom of their contracts, did they read it, sign, then later decide to betray it? or did they never see it, and accidentally sign on to something they would’ve otherwise never agreed to?

As always, I look to my big sister for an answer:

My big sister is stubborn so I know she wouldn’t betray anything she set her mind to. She’s very good about details so she wouldn’t miss those small letters, she writes in really small handwriting anyway. My big sister is also a super intelligent reader, she knows about things like fine print. So she would have known to look for it. she would have read it. And if she had read it, she would have signed it. her heart is big enough to and I know the size of her heart because my arms were created to wrap around it and I was born with pretty long arms. she would have signed it for sure.

it had to be that it just wasn’t there, it was never there written for her in the first place. Maybe that happens sometimes

or I don’t know

maybe she read it but found a loophole in it with her intelligence maybe. She really is super intelligent so I don’t know. I am sort of wishing she would tell me. what it is she agreed to do about me. cause I’ve just been over here thinking. and I’ve done a lot of thinking and now I’m stuck. I haven’t been able to think further than this. and she’s always so ahead, so full of the brightest most impressive ideas, and my hands are so stuck open, waiting for her to share………..