I remember the day she came. It was all  very sudden. I had only known for about two months that she was on her way. I remember having mixed emotions, fear, nervousness, and worry. She surprised us all by arriving two months early, but it wasn’t until almost four months after she arrived that I truly felt her impact on my life.
I remember having to wash my hands all the way up to my elbows with medical soap and cold water that forced me to put my jacket on because I was too cold, just to be allowed into the same room as her.

Bismillah (oh my God)!

When I first saw her I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was small when she first came, almost the size of my hand. As I reached my hand in to try and touch her I felt the sudden warmth of her incubator warm my previously cold arms. Her skin was almost too big for her body and she had a soft coat of hair that made her feel like a plush toy. She didn’t feel real. When she first came into the world she was nameless. Everyone just called her “the youngest one.”

For a while her being in the world didn’t really change me. This was mainly because she spent her first three months of her life in the hospital. For those three months whenever someone asked me how my little sister was doing I would just stare at them in confusion, sometimes I thought they were asking about my cat until I remembered that I had a younger sister. People would always ask how it felt to be an older sister, my response was always the same,

“It’s no different than being the youngest.”

That answer stayed the same for several months until my life drastically changed.

When she came home I was so excited. I saw her wrapped in a small blanket like a burrito only her small face peaking out. She was so small, so fragile, I was scared I might accidentally break her. I remember holding her close to my chest feeling her small pulse in my hands. For a while I would forget she was even home because of how quiet she was. For a while I hardly even saw her because she was always with my mom and my mom didn’t trust us to take care of her, until she was about six months, but, being premature, she might as well have been four months old, that was when I finally became an older sister. Since my older sisters were always busy considering that they were both in high school and one of them was studying for her SAT and ACT, I was the only one free enough to babysit. My schedule started to form around her. I would wake up really early for school so that I would take care of her, this became regular routine for that whole school year and little bit of the next one. There was one day that I remember specifically where I was late to school because she wouldn’t stop crying and the only way that she wouldn’t stop was if I stayed sitting down holding her at the same angle and whenever I moved she’d wake up and cry. I held her for so long my arms began to ache beneath the warmth of her blanket, which worried me. 

What if I drop her? I began to think. I became so wrapped in my worry I started whispering little prayers in her ears. For a moment she was so still that I was afraid that was no longer breathing and I would constantly bring my head close to hers and feel her small warm breathing on my face. That was when I realized that she was very much real and she would one day grow up to become a child. I imagined that that was how Gepetto felt when Pinocchio became a real boy.

What will she be like when I no longer have to hold her still in order for her to not cry? Then a tear rolled down my face, and smile forming on my lips as I kissed her soft forehead.

Nowadays, I think back to when she was that small, before I realized that I was the one she would look up to. Now whenever I do something I have to remember that I have another shadow. I can’t do anything that I wouldn’t want her to do, which worries me because what if I mess up. What if I get mad and I say something I wouldn’t want her to, or if she becomes attached to technology because my phone is always on me. I worry that she won’t be the person my mom wanted her to be because of me, but I suppose that’s how you know that you’re an older sister, when you realize that your actions no longer just affect you but the way someone else turns out. Whatever it is I wouldn’t give up being an older sister for anything in the world because despite the difficulties, the smile I see on her face as her eyes light up and her little laugh when I agree to take her outside is worth more than anything.