Just hours after the big push, my mom sits up in her hospitable bed, cradling her newborn baby. This birth--my birth--is her last. With my mother’s sentimentality for lasts and firsts, my father has been made to record the whole event. “Are you excited to have a new baby sister?” she asks Jack, the younger of my two brothers. The camera pans over and shakily zooms in for his response. He eyes the neglected tray of hospital food on her lap. “Yeah, sure...Are you gonna eat that pudding cup, or can I have it?”

Listen-- I’m not holding a grudge. I mean, I don’t look offended whatsoever by that remark in the home video. Watching the video now, I mostly feel unsettled. This exchange, hope met with disinterest, has echoed throughout my life. The moment Jack and I became acquainted as siblings set the dynamic between us that has lasted through all eighteen years of our siblinghood. But to understand this dynamic, you must first understand the most difficult period of our family’s life.

Cut to a different hospital, seven years later. After weeks of bruises Jack--now a few days into seventh grade- was diagnosed with AML, acute myeloid leukemia, or “the extra bad kind of leukemia” as my mother explained to her seven year old daughter.

From his hospital bed, Jack was too weak to do much more than watch TV and play video games. Fortunately he had a limitless capacity for both. His life, our lives, depended on fluorescent lights, IVs, a steady stream of doctors and nurses with needles and test results, and relatives and friends with warm meals and sympathetic shoulders. Our parents struggled to keep a 24/7 presence at the hospital while still having one parent at home overnight with my brother and me. The math was unforgiving, requiring over two hundred hours per week and a precise ballet of transitions, meals, and fitful sleep. Jack understood and appreciated all of the support and attention he received, but he surely wished he could do things on his own or, like any thirteen year old, revel in some alone time.

Perhaps he sensed as well, the odd timing of his dependency at an age when he should have been gaining independence, a growing karmic debt that he could not imagine how to repay. The down payment of his lease on life, the fulcrum on which everything turned, was dependent on a bone marrow transplant from his little sister, who, just in first grade, had in some ways more control over his recovery than he did.

Since his recovery, Jack has graduated both high school and college. I am set to finish high school this spring. We stand at about the same height and nearly the same weight. Looking at us side by side, with our matching set of lips and noses, it’s not hard to believe that we share 99% of the same blood. And, if you took the time to chat with us, you’d quickly find out we both love to read and go to museums. Then you might wonder if those shared interests, combined with our unique genetic connection, has made us inseparable. Not yet.

Jack and I argue-- a lot. And like many siblings, we have designated roles in our fights as well as our share of favorite topics. I initiate the play, usually. He’s refusing to help around the house, or interrupting me at the dinner table, or ignoring my texts. I point out one of these issues and pass it on to him. In response, he is often hurt by what he sees as an implicit accusation of malicious intent. I tell him he did something that hurts my feeling. It hurts his feelings that he thinks that I think hurting my feelings was his intention. Yelling ensues. Neither of us can resist the temptation to bring up our last argument. Sometimes I even feel the need to storm out--which, surprisingly, never resolves the conflict. It doesn’t bring out the best in either of us.

These fights became rarer, but more intense when he left for college. He went to a home town university, and that closeness with the lingering scars of his adolescence was enough for him to feel like we were suffocating him. Before moving into his dorm his freshman year, he told my mom not to call, text, or email him unless it was a dire emergency (and if it was an emergency, if she could just call 911 that would be easier, thanks). My mom, though she suffered by this request, understood that his struggle for independence was a consequence of his complete dependence on others when he was sick.

When Jack restricted his communication with my parents, I was lumped in with them. Maybe it’s because I was the little sister who still lived at home, or maybe he needed to establish independence from me too. The next four years brought no visits to his dorm and no phone calls checking in. I would ask him if he wanted to come to my basketball game or art show, to no reply. When I saw him at family gatherings I didn’t usually exchange more than a few sentences with him. It wasn’t out of resentment-- though my feelings were hurt-- but the physical and emotional distance between us felt too great to conquer. Between my devotion to all things extracurricular in school and his commitment to the social and academic adventures college offered, it wasn’t hard for us to stop prioritizing our siblinghood.

But Jack’s graduation from college sparked an unexpected change. Every now and then, between arguments and prolonged periods without speaking, Jack would make a small gesture. Did I want to watch a movie with him? Did I also read that funny New Yorker article? It was like trying to slowly open a shaken bottle of seltzer. Every invitation was a release of tension between us--a hiss of exhalation, a reason to be hopeful.

Recently I called Jack asking about the availability of a book at the bookstore where he works. What should have been an easy conversation immediately became an argument. I told him not to call me back and abruptly hung up. That evening, he called me back. He quickly apologized. We didn’t discuss the fight beyond that, but we did talk about a famous art heist in Boston, which led us down the rabbit hole of wikipedia and the interesting pages we had read.

I don’t rely on our blood ties to bring us any closer together. The fact is, neither of us owes the other a thing. But any good relationship--familial, platonic, romantic-- relies more on a mutual desire to be closer than a sense of duty. This brings me to the second ground truth: we both want to have a better relationship. I don’t know when that next small kind gesture will be. But I know there will be one. And when being our parents’ children isn’t such a defining role in our lives, I suspect our small gestures of kindness will outnumber our arguments. So I’ll hold my breath. And wait. Until I hear the tsssss of the bottle and can sigh in relief.