It’s silly. Your birthday is this week, and one particular memory keeps surfacing. It’s not even a particularly bad memory; we were children then, and since I now have children of my own, I understand better. Yet still, it fills me with sadness and regret.
You probably don’t even remember, you were so small. I think you were two, which means I was seven. It was the middle of the night. I was startled awake by a noise, and, there you were, sitting in my room, playing with my toy bowling set. You saw I was awake and asked: “Come play with me ‘Yssica?”
I didn’t sit and play with you. I got up, woke up our mother, and she put you back to bed.
You were two and I was seven and anyone would say that my reaction was a normal one. All big sisters are annoyed by their little brother. But still.
I should have played with you.
Maybe, just maybe, if I had, things between us would be different, and we wouldn’t be strangers today.
Happy Birthday.
