My youngest sister, Whitney, is one of the most glorious human beings in the world. She has such a creative mind, that it’s often hard to truly understand what she’s actually thinking or talking about. Here is the transcript of a note she once wrote: “Im going to the club today don’t ask my Name or my Phone Number couse ya a well Hit from the top”. 

Lyrics to a song? A profound statement on stranger-danger? The perfect comeback to use on a creepy boy at the club? Why no punctuation? What does this all mean?

But actually, Whit has forever been one of my most consistently reflective sounding boards. In particular, I remember an evening when a boy I liked abruptly stopped texting me. It seemed very, very done– he was over it. Buh-bye. That was hard to take. Rejection of that sort, when it’s completely unclear what you could have possibly done wrong, hurts.

I started crying. First just a little, and then a lot more. I was suddenly hit by how sad it felt to be dismissed so simply, without explanation or sense. Whit saw me in bed, crawled right in beside me and rubbed my back. She whispered in my ear, “It’s okay. He wasn’t right for you anyway. Someone who doesn’t appreciate you doesn’t deserve you.” She was nine!

She stayed with me for a while, until it was all better.