I often find myself reminiscing about our childhood. At times, I replay a scenario in my mind and catch myself smiling at the memory. Our shared moments make me who I am today. Without you, I can’t say that I’d be the intellectual and fun-loving young woman who I grew to be. Most kids see their cousin’s maybe once, twice a year, including Christmas, but I’m lucky enough to have cousins close enough to nickname my brothers and sisters.

We share the smell of a Popsicle, melting down its limber stick and falling through our petit fingers on a hot summer’s day. Sweat dripping from our faces and not having a care in the world about where it might fall as we stand behind a handcrafted sign advertizing homemade lemonade on a dead-end street when Grandma turns out to be our best and our only customer.

We share the smell of chipper snow squashed and smashed to the inside of our nearly waterproof hats and gloves. The feeling you get when your snow pants can’t help but ride up, and when your socks begin to fall past your heels in the snow boots you’ve got on. You are the sight of a perfectly formed snow angel, with its wings both equal in size and its glittering composition moving under streaming flickers of sun. You’re a triumphant fort lying beneath a snow-covered pine tree, pummeled to pieces after a battle between castle fortresses or a snowball fight.

We share the exhilarating feeling elementary kids get while sitting in the back seat of the school bus, waiting, anticipating for the bus to roll over bumps within the road. When, it isn’t the bump in the road that they actually wait for, but the fierce force of adrenaline that rushes through the bus tires and under the rows of brown, making its way to the rear as the children reach their toes off the ground and flick yellow stripes with their fingertips while bounding from their seats.

We share the smell of autumn leaves pressed to our noses as we tumble this way and roll that way through the pile we’ve created that covers the bare and cold autumn ground. I dive down beneath the assortment of colors: red, yellow, green, orange, and I close my eyes next to you to embrace your warmth blindly. “As long as we hold on to one another’s hands, we’ll make it out!” you’d exclaimed while rattling through the leaf pile, keeping tightly clenched to my body.

We’re like a young girl sitting upon a wooden stool, searching out a window in front of her. It’s raining; water falls, pours, drips, and drops. She longs to sneak out and jump through all the puddles resting in the warmth covered driveway. She brings herself to a rain gathered crack in the ground, striping herself from her shoes and socks. Her knees rise, telling her toes to splash the puddle apart.

You’re a parking break to stop me from rolling down a hill; you keep me out of the ditch. “Whenever you feel down or uneasy about yourself, remember the kind of person you are, and remember your family and how they shed light on your life,” you’d said.

We’re like a little boy, standing beside a table too high to reach, peering up at its surface in wonder. His nose flares while drying paint sends a smell through the air and near the boy. He ponders about the room, searching for an angle to see what’s been exciting his senses. Then his eyes stop upon a chair. It sits next to the table, facing it and the window before it. The boy bends his knees, reaching down while grabbing the table’s legs, and then he stands on it, glancing at the beautiful paintings that dry before him.

You’re a pair of arms reaching for my embrace when I feel alone. “I’ll always be there,” you said. “Family is family, and that makes you my responsibility.”

We share the feeling you get when you jump into a pond for the first time during summer and the water crests perfectly around your skin. You open your eyes a crack, and it turns out to not be that bad, but after they finally begin to burn you close them and pop up from beneath the water for another breath of air like a dolphin would.

We share the textures of different layers, piled and piled beneath our Halloween costumes as children, only there because out mothers forced them to be, and the crazed sensation of running door to door asking a neighbor to smell your feet.

We’re the children who venture across an imaginary realm with noble steeds, castles, and mystical creatures. “I’ll play as long as I get to be the knight,” you’d said. And behind your voice I’d heard, “well, I get to be a Pegasus.” Or I’d catch an, “I’m a fairy princess with purple wings and a magical wand!”

We share that excited feeling you get when you watch Star Wars after you haven’t seen it in what feels like ages, and you feel like your life is comparable to a world revolution. Or SpongeBob, the homely sense you get when you hear his voice: his jolly and little laugh. And you wonder what life in Bikini Bottom would be like, if it would ever disappoint you with its flower draped skies and overrated cheeseburgers.

You’re a pair of sunglasses to shade the sun when it gets too hot, and a bottle of sun lotion to prevent it from leaving any burns. “If anyone ever gets to you, just remember that everything happens for a reason and to learn from your experiences,” you’ve told me.

We share a love like the world with its fattest cookie, the Oreo. Although it appears only black and white, it tastes green, red, orange, yellow, purple, and blue. It’s full of different textures and patterns, and with every bite you experience something new, something you wish you could relive and experience just one more time. And even though there are all those other delicious cookies out there, nothings ever better than the Oreo. And just like the milk to the Oreo and the Oreo to the milk, you will always be my best friend.