Proportion

Growing up as the oldest of six siblings by nature makes you feel discrete. I leaned into an adult-aged maturity as a teenager and absconded my youth before I grew hair under my armpits. In some sense I’ve been collecting scraps of the childlike innocence that could have been now that I’m in my twenties.

Aria is my eight year old sister, born with a cleft that challenged her youth and made her astounding as ever now. She’s radiant, teeming with joy when I walk up to the door and fain to soften into my lap to have her hair braided. As she’s gotten older I’ve seen her grow curious about how things are made, tinkering with glue (gluing the pages of a notebook together), or shoving a rubber ball into a cylinder-shaped package, but one of her favorite materials is a fitted sheet. She knows its proportions and can tug all four corners to scale around a variety of objects. As long as there’s enough room for her to crawl under it. I witnessed one of these carefully crafted fortresses being built the other day, and marveled at her adroit assembly of household furniture. Her slim and short body dragged bar stools into the living room, sidled the arms of the couch on her toes, and wove pillows like layered bricks to create an entrance/exit. She cut the ribbon with a soft smile and lifted the sheet that measured just above the crown of my head to usher me inside. As any good host would prepare, snacks were included.

I haven’t always liked being the eldest but I’ve always been exceedingly comfortable with it: I nurture, I mentor, I gracefully lead, I quietly defend. But recently I’ve been on the receiving end of these things, and in observing Aria I’ve been ripening the childhood that I missed. Being the adult big sister embroiders me back into a narrative that I thought I had surpassed when I moved out of the house. I feel involved when I visit home. I feel part of a greater whole.

I’ve noticed that kids take in information through their hands, learning their surroundings by touch, as you warn a child not to hover above a hot stove, and only do they understand why after they’ve been burned. Or, like Aria, they build a “home” out of unconventional items, mimicking the affordances of a door with a pillow and a taped mason jar lid. And in this tactile education there is empathy, the ability to learn a material with a sort of juvenile excitement, and thus leaks the ability to connect with the youthfulness most shed after eighteen. The youth we all sometimes still need.