a love letter to my sisters
To my big sisters,
Tacie, to me you are delicate blooms in white light mornings, constellations in the night sky, and huge spoonfuls of tapioca pearls — like the moon child that you are, you light every step that you take.
Ocie, to me you are Parisian sunrises, moonlight lullabies, and hanging our bare legs in the summer breeze as we laugh watching the world turn its back on us — for your happiness is a contagion I hope the world would catch.
We never had our own rooms, as Mama always wanted our sisterhood to grow. The first day you left for another city was my first night sleeping in an empty room. I remember grabbing your pajamas from the cabinet, lying them on your beds for no one to wear. I always thought our bedroom was compact, but now that the floor didn’t creak with Ocie’s goofiness and the walls didn’t echo with Tacie’s tossing and turning, it became uncomfortably large.
Yet, there were times when I didn’t miss you. It was another evening of us bickering; voices rising over the sacred silence, every word pronounced stabbing through the tepid air — yet the word “sorry” never left our mouths. We were brought up in a household where apologizing wasn’t commonplace.
Tacie was different though, always the first to put down her pride to calm the brittle air.
I found love through your words. When I ramble about the minor troubles in my life, how you dry my tears up by the time you leave the room. How you leave overnight written notes on my desk to encourage me during my monthly exams. How you always end a phone call with a brief, “Love you.” I find Tacie soothing. Confiding felt serene; there’s always comfort in the weight of her words. It was the fragments of phone calls, sticky notes, and guidance that pieced me into who I am today.
We once asked Ma as to why she named us the way she did and she’d always explain it in the same way, how her and Pa’s initial is ‘M’, and with us sisters’, that’d make “MEJA” — a table, in Indonesian.
“Our family, as stable as a table.”
I remember sitting on the floor of my grandma’s room, when Ocie told me (through a call or a voice note, now this I can’t seem to recall) that she, Tacie, Ma and Pa had just gone out for dinner.
“A table for five,” was nothing out of the ordinary, a day-to-day thing for us to tell any waiter at any restaurant, but I wasn’t there this time. Just like how a radish cake doesn’t taste as good when I eat it without you, an empty seat at the table left a missing presence.
Ocie never fails to fill my stomach with her cooking. A grilled cheese sandwich when the midnight hunger creeps in, a homemade sushi tower for my birthday, her nonchalant tip-taps as she walks out of the kitchen to spoon-feed Tacie and me what she has just made.
It was a week where I couldn’t love myself enough to eat. Heavy was my heart and empty was my stomach since Monday morning. It was a chilly Thursday afternoon.
You sent me a personal lunch box that day. The chicken was peeled; no bones in sight. Triangle-shaped sandwiches; crust was cut. I hope you know what that day meant to me.
I guess she wanted me to eat.
Love I have, sisters. For it is you who have given it to me the most. For it is you who stay constant within everything temporary (in between). What life has in store, I am unsure. The world will rock us, gravity will grind us, but as the orbit locks me with you in it, I am unafraid.
So to my sisters, I am thankful for the warmth that never stops greeting me like an old friend, the company that sits like January rain on my skin, and the life that we get to share together.
With all my love,
Your little sis x
