Bitter Sweet

I grin impishly up at my brothers, who wear the same half-smirk like a birth mark similar to the ones we all share on our neck. I have that smirk too of course, and bite at my cheek to satiate it. It feels too.. robotic how similar I've noticed we can be. Maybe it is from years of denying my own family, but it seems so painfully obvious just alike we are. I let myself smile at the brief thought, forcing my eyes to the two men on the vintage seats my mother insisted we buy.

"Matching sweaters?" Aaron asks with a chuckle, holding his up to his chest. I chose the green pleating to match his eyes. Tom beside him holds it at arms width like it's a drooling child.

"Do we have to... wear these?" He asks skeptically. I roll my eyes, knowing he finds an appreciation in the fabric from how he runs his thumbs over the lapels.

"Hell yeah we do. If you don't, you'll make grandma sad."

Tom perks up, ever the obedient first born. "She got us these?"

"No. But she'll think it's cute as peaches if we all wear them!" I grin mockingly back.

"Thanks, Rose." Aaron cuts in genially, shrugging it on happily over his plain black shirt.

I nod, glancing to my dog in a much smaller matching sweater to their own. My mom joins us on the turquoise couch, her coffee hot and reminding me of an airport from its quality. I don't need to suppress a gag at how familiar it's become now, noting how she's still in her pyjamas but will switch to her own ugly sweater- purple, mine blue- within the hour. Its so familiar watching how she tucks her feet beneath her, my dog finding purchase on her thighs.

Unfamiliar is having my brothers home for Christmas.

They are spread across the country, and we text sometimes but we very rarely see them in person. And it's special just having them, me and my mom all under one roof again. For once getting along among the rubble of a broken home. I imagine my father standing idle in an awful green robe, a camera in hand to capture the moment. But I do not linger.

We don't have traditions. We used to- the extended family would gather for dinner with my grandma in her basement suite and then head upstairs to join my aunt's family for gifts and games. But my grandma is too old to cook despite how much she tries, and my aunt's kids don't much care for us nowadays, off in their own worlds.

But I do notice the small things- how Tom seldom wears the pocket watch I got him last Christmas in every photo of him all spiffied up in his law suit.

How when touring Aaron's apartment for the first time, he had a painting from when I was eighteen proudly hung on the wall.

And I know they'll treasure these stupid sweaters, too. They'll sit on top of their folded clothes, as though it's an everyday item, never shoved to the back. They will open their closets and glimpse it and remember how much their little sister loves them. That is a tradition I shall uphold- their remembrance of my care and adoration.

Tom returns a moment later clad in his brown pattern in time for breakfast, and I don't say anything. I know my brothers like I know myself, and poking the bear with the proverbial ugly Christmas sweater gift would embarrass him. I lean familiarly into my dog that has scooted himself between my lower back and the chair backing, and watch as my brothers tuck into their food my mother has made: pancakes, veggie bacon and eggs- tradition, only when we are all together- and cheers my Mimosa to theirs, the filtering of classics filling our conversation about what's new in their exciting lives. I do not cut in about myself, rather quipping insults a sister is to do, and absorb my mothers happiness at the tableau to sustain me another year.

I do not have traditions in the sense of those family dinners flushed with laughter, and shredding of reflective paper we would shoot at each other's heads in a game borne of family anymore. We do not make caves out of snow mounds my brothers would cozy up with me inside and tell me stories, either. I do not come, nor do I go. I am stagnantly here- the sibling left behind as everyone grows and disperses. But I have familiarity. And that is family. That is Christmas.