Sibling Visión: Sonja’s Birthday: Part 4

Digital photograph

Fifteen years ago today she took her first breath. The first daylight melted through the windows, the room foggy after our mothers labor, our faces stuck in perpetual anticipation. My tiny hands clung to the side of the tub, waiting, watching. 

In the nine months leading up to that moment, I offered to shine a light “to show the baby the way out”. In the nine months leading up to that moment, my parents read aloud to me as we waited for the baby to gestate. One of my earliest memories is sitting on my mother’s lap, nestled next to my sibling in utero, as my mother read The Chronicles of Narnia to me.

In the space between us, between our minds and the stories we absorbed as we grew, exists a rich stillness that transports us to our days of early childhood. We grew up in wonder, learning that each moment contained incredible potential and with our imaginations and the stories, we found even more.

That day, when oxygen turned her body from purple to supple, when the sun just appeared over the hill, the world grew that much brighter. Her strength and grace, humor and wit fill the world, and every moment, with possibility. 

I dwell in Possibility – (466)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –