A Room of Whose Own?

“A woman must have ... a room of her own...”

For as long as I can remember I shared a bedroom with my sister who is four years my junior. We shared lots of good and bad memories in that pink bedrom with the two canopy beds. I watched her cry probably as many times as she watched me cry, but we also laughed together, joked together, grew together.

We've shared more than one room over the years, but it was always the two of us. Sometimes we hated each other's guts and sometimes we were the best of friends. I can remember the time I convinced her I was an alien and the time we sketched each other's outlines onto the walls with magic markers (you don't want to know how old we were when we did that). I cannot remember all the times we talked together into the wee hours of the morning or all the conversations that we had.

But as of tomorrow, when my family returns home after having some work done in our house, we will no longer be roommates anymore. I am away at college and am getting placed in some random room with an extra bed (that is really only slightly exagerated), she is moving up in the world and will finally have a room of her own.

I am happy for her, happy that we are moving back home. And I know that as of now my time at home is limited to school vacations, holidays, and little else. But still, part of me is really sad to see us part. Perhaps, we parted long ago when I went to Israel and then college and effectively moved out. Perhaps, in a greater sense we never will really part. But I will not be able to easily and slyly "borrow" her clothing when she is not around, I will not feel the need to yell at her when she's on the phone at 3 a.m. and I want to sleep (imagine that!), and I will not be there to offer my advice, to tell over my day, to listen to her, to laugh, to cry, to sing, to dance, to fight, to share.