Some things you never forget. They stay burned into your memory like a scar. Maybe you want it to just disappear. Maybe you want it to remain there for the rest of time. Maybe you don’t know what or who you would be without it.

Personally, I don’t remember things well. Especially things that happened awhile ago. Things that happened when I was younger. Some things, however, I remember perfectly.


I was dressed in all white. A warm hat with a ball of fuzz on top, just like all children the age of three wore when it was cold out back then. The room was white too. Most hospital rooms are, probably to keep the patients they contain in a calm state. Patients like my mother. She seemed very calm to me. She had done this before, when it was my turn. She was wearing white too. A white gown that I said looked pretty on her. She laughed at that. I didn’t know why. The cups were white too. My daddy had brought them to us. White cups filled with milkshakes that were most likely brown to match the flavor of their chocolatey goodness that I sucked down perhaps a little too quickly. I don’t remember if my daddy was wearing white. He may have been, but then he also may have been wearing a big black jacket that kept him warm.

It was November. November eleventh 1998. I only remember that now because we celebrate it every year. Along with March 26, April 14, May 14, and July 10. They are birthdays. And this one was the first birthday of my little sister, Billie. I don’t remember anything else from that day. Only before daddy and I had to leave and let the doctors take care of Mommy. I was worried. Hospitals were places you were left alone if you were sick. But Daddy had promised me that Mommy would be fine. And she was. I saw her again later. I don’t know how much later, but it must have been quite a while because she looked very tired. She was holding something.

I don’t remember exactly what happened at that point. I was only three, after all. I remember it as a snapshot that I’ve seen only a few times but that is burned into my memory. Burned in like all the other things that I never forget. I sat on the bed next to my mother. I looked up at her big beautiful eyes that I knew loved me so much. They had tears in them. She looked down at the bundle in her arms. What was it? Why was it making her cry? I looked down at the thing sitting in my mother’s embrace. It looked up at me.

“Her name is Billie,” my mother told me.

“Billie,” I repeated.

This tiny baby wrapped in a blanket that was, yet again, white, closed her eyes. My mommy put her in my arms. I loved her right then. It just happened. I had a little sister.