Sisters and brothers

     Her name was Apriya, and she sat on the front seat of the bus, with the rest of the kindergartners. A tiny waif-like Audrey Hepburn-ish wisp of a girl, delicate and wide-eyed and animated. And chatty. Very precise in speech and diction and hand movements to illustrate her story.
 
    And did I mention chatty?

    The whole trip she kept me entertained with stories, of what she did in school that day, of vacations and pets.

    But mostly about her sister. Her younger sister.

    The year after next, her sister is to start kindergarten. Apriya by then will be a second grader, and assigned a seat somewhere in the middle of the bus, following the pecking order set since time immemorial. Little kids in the front where the driver can watch them, big kids in the back, the rest dispersed somewhere in the middle. By the time her sister arrives, Apriya will have been displaced from the front in favor of younger riders.
     The problem with this? Apriya's sister is going to need her right there with her. About this she was persistently insistent.
     "She is very scared of new things, I just KNOW she will cry the first day" she stressed, her face a mixture of persuasion and concern. "She will only be OK if I am there to tell her where to get off the bus, and what is going on all the time, and I will have to hold her hand if she gets scared."

     I have two brothers, one 4 1/2 years younger and the other 6 years younger. I never attended the same school with them, never had the opportunity to shepherd them through the process of adjusting to school. It's different with boys, also. Most of our interactions when we were young involved playing outside in the woods or inside with Star Wars toys. Or launching balls, sticks, rocks, or other missiles at each other in countless hard-fought battles. Lots of battles.

     I see it is different with sisters. Stacey and her sister Amy, who is two years younger, have always kept in closer contact than I with my brothers. Rare is it when a day passes when they are not in contact. Sure, they fight and squabble just like brothers do, but they also call to ask for advice. To offer support. To take care of each other.
     If I close my eyes and imagine hard enough, I can see Stacey at 6 years old worried how Amy will adapt to riding a bus to school in two more years. Worried that she will cry the first day, that she needs help to get through, needs to have the process explained to her, and to be comforted. To have her hand held when scared.
     Sisters are like that.

 
     When we reached Apriya's bus stop, her mom and her sister were waiting for her at the corner. Of course, her sister was waiting fifty feet or so in advance of the stop, in order to race the bus to the corner, and so she came bounding up out of breath and beaming. Apriya pointed her out to me, although she looked and acted so similarly that it was obvious they belonged together, and together they walked home with their mom.
    Holding hands.

     I think Apriya and her sister will be just fine in a couple of years, regardless of where they sit on the bus. A love that powerful is not diminished by any distance.

     Not even 1200 miles could keep them apart. Just ask my wife and her sister. They know.