1When my younger sister announced that she had accepted a job in Australia, the kitchen fell completely silent.
2My father congratulated her warmly, but my mother went quiet and stared at her cup of tea.
3For weeks afterwards, every conversation in our house somehow circled back to the subject of her leaving.
4My mother began cooking enormous dinners, as if she could keep her daughter at home through food alone.
5Meanwhile, my sister quietly filled three suitcases and sold nearly everything she could not take with her.
6On the morning of her flight, we all pretended rather badly that it was an ordinary day.
7At the airport, my mother finally cried, and my father hugged my sister for a long time.
8Now we video call her every single Sunday, and the house feels both emptier and strangely closer.
9Her empty bedroom has become a storage room, though nobody in the family ever calls it that.
10Missing someone, I have slowly come to learn, is simply love with nowhere very convenient to put it.
11Next summer we will visit her in Sydney, which gives my mother something wonderful to plan for.