Things Sisters Talk About

-Anna

"You two are sisters? You don't look anything alike!" is almost always the incredulous response when Kristina and I introduce ourselves as sisters. So, okay, maybe we don't look exactly alike. I mean, she has curly, fiery red hair. I have straight brown. She has clear blue eyes. I have brown. She has fair, white skin that turns red in the sun. Mine turns (yes) brown. So, to the casual observer, one of us has to be adopted! But a more careful observer would note the similarity in the way we smile and the lines of our profile. And the most careful of observers, looking beyond our physical attributes, would see that we are more alike than not, and there would be no doubt that we are, indeed, sisters.

As sisters, we share parents, backgrounds, memories, fights, laughs and some comical childhood photos. And though we've now lived more years apart than together, and though she lives half a world away and 12 hours ahead of me, she's still my big sister and I'm still her annoying little sister. Our roles will never change. We span the distance of living apart with all kinds of shared interests: music, movies, TV shows like Lost, Heroes and Pushing Daisies, games (Settlers of Catan is a must play when we are together) and books, books, books.

My sister is a linguist, and so she, like me, loves words, language, books. She, like me, loves to read. I can still remember, as a kid, peeking into her room through the doorway (I dare not enter without permission) and pleading with her to play with me, "Please, Kristina, play a game with me!" I would beg incessantly. Her flat, monotone denial, "Not now, I'm busy." Busy reading. Busy sitting in her rocking game chair in the corner of her room, lamp on, nose in book, reading. She was always reading. And eventually, so was I. It wasn't very often that you found either of us without a book. And the same is true today. Only now we've gone past just a shared love of reading, now we share what we love to read (I think we could spend hours talking about books - especially if we had a vanilla latte or mocha warming our hands). Thanks to Skype we can still talk books, even though for me it's 9PM and I'm winding down my day and for her it's 9AM and she's drinking her morning tea. We can still talk books and life and the things we love most in this world - the things sisters talk about.