“Call me when you get the chance.”
The message from my sister appears beneath a blue and gray stream of similar, brief exchanges. “Call me back” she wrote in one text, followed by a dramatic line of exclamation points. “Sorry I’m in class, call later?” she wrote in another. I can’t count how many times I’ve replied with, “Can’t talk right now, in the library.” A soft pang of guilt and even nostalgia, strikes me as I scroll through our messages.
It never used to be this complicated.
As a triplet, my sisters and I are all in our sophomore year of college, each enrolled at different universities. We may chat over text every few hours, complaining about the inconveniences of our day or the stress of upcoming exams, but there have been many instances where we’ve gone days without speaking on the phone; weeks to months pass by without seeing each other in person.
For readers with siblings who went to college before them, or those with younger siblings still living at home, I suppose this reality might not be so uncommon. Personally, I still find this fact to be an utterly foreign concept, as jarring as associating the feeling of ‘home’ with a place where my sisters have never lived.
In the months leading up to move-in day at Cornell, I kept a running list of fears in my mind: Would I regret transferring here? Would I get sick of dining hall food? Would I hate my major? Some fears proved to be rational, having realized my disdain of cafeteria dining within the first week or so. Others, like my nightmare of falling into an Ithaca gorge, proved utterly baseless. But a single fear weighed most heavily on my conscience: Would I lose my closeness with my sisters? Would our relationship, the one I have arguably coveted most throughout my life, withstand the test of time and distance wedged between us — and if it did, would we somehow be better for it?
I can now attest that although almost every aspect of my daily life has shifted since coming to Cornell, my sisters and I remain as close as ever. I still inundate our group chat with narrations of the most mundane parts of my day — the current state of the weather in Ithaca, if I’m debating on trying a new flavor in my coffee or if I missed the TCAT and just barely made it to class on time (again!).
Sibling relationships are profound in this respect — they are uniquely conditioned to shape-shift to our current needs and circumstances, and rarely do they ever break. This only makes logical sense in my mind. After all, your siblings have known you at every age, witnessing every awkward, wonderful or tragic moment of your life. Flexibility is the very essence of sibling bonds, and easily their greatest strength.
How is it that we used to see each other everyday? Isn’t it sad how much time has passed since that was last true? I’ve often pondered these questions from the isolation of my dorm, recalling, bittersweetly, how I once yearned for a time when my life wouldn’t run parallel to my sisters. I suppose now, looking back, I can sympathize with my former longing for independence. We had shared almost everything up to this point in our lives: every birthday, every graduation, every milestone intertwined. The promise of having space in college was undeniably exciting — thrilling even.
I’ve now come to understand that the thrill of freedom doesn’t necessarily ease the poignancy of loss — the loss of time, of memories, of shared laughter with your siblings. I continue to dread saying goodbye to my sisters after a visit back home, knowing we won't see each other in person until the next holiday or break. The difficulty of letting go can easily be applied to any relationship in life, but in the context of a sibling, it is as if you are watching your childhood quite literally slip from your fingers.
I suppose this is just one of the many, minute moments to be distilled into the bigger, frightening experience of growing up. Moving away to college inevitably means you will begin carving out your adult life, establishing new friendships and routines that your siblings may never again be so strongly a part of — at least not to the extent of when you all lived under the same roof.
This is not to say that when you go off to college, your siblings somehow become less important figures in your life. I’d argue quite the contrary — I know for a fact that I rely on my sister’s advice, support and ability to make me laugh now more than I ever did. I only wish that I could remind my high school self what a gift it is to be so close, and that to take that period of life for granted is to waste precious time that is already fleeting. I would tell her that when you finally move away, or celebrate your first birthday without your sisters at your side, you will desperately miss the days when they were living just down the hall — always within reach.
Katelyn Halverson is a sophomore in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be reached at kh874@cornell.edu.
