“How on earth are we going to find any men if we never go on any dates?”
“The doorbell will ring, we will open the door and there they will be…”

My sister responded to my frustrated question with a grin, the gorgeous dimples on her cheeks deepening, her arm dramatically making the wide gesture of opening a door. She winked at me and added in her usual know-it-all attitude “….when the time is right.“

“Of course!” I said, rolling my eyes.
“100% true,” she responded, adding “ If I am lying, may my tongue fall off.”

Then – after waiting a couple of seconds, she slowly stuck out her tongue at me. I laughed, there was no way not to, she was cute & funny & an insufferable wise-ass all at the same time!
Didi (meaning elder-sister in Hindi); which is what I called her, was always sure. She was sure we were going to find our destiny in America. She was sure we were going to be Sister-Directors; the first in the world. She was also sure we were going to meet two brothers – and they would somehow appear when the time was right.

And I believed her. I had no reason not to. After losing our mom as young teenagers growing up in India, we had learnt to depend on each other, stand for each other, and trust each other – implicitly. Together we had crossed the oceans to get to America, together we had driven cross-country to get to The City of Angels and together we were studying at UCLA so as to become the aforementioned “Sister-Directors”. So involved and busy in our ambition were we, working full-time at our jobs during the day and studying film at nights & weekends that we had no time for dating or putting ourselves out there! Thus my question. Thus her answer. And even though it didn’t quite make any sense in the logical world, deep down I knew Didi was right.

I was wrong.

I understood I was wrong as I sat outside the ICU and the phone rang announcing the end of my sister’s battle with cancer. She was gone. No doorbell was going to ring, there would be no brothers. Nor Sister-directors.

Francis Underwood ; the lead character in The House of Cards famously said, “There are two kinds of pain. The first is the sort of pain that hurts but makes you strong. And the other is the useless kind- the sort of pain that’s only suffering.”

Losing my sister was definitely not the first kind of pain. It was suffering – of the kind that feels like a live amputation, the kind that shatters your heart in so many pieces you know you will never be able to put back together, the kind that threatens to destroy your taste for life itself.

And yet. Someone once said to me that life wants to live. Perhaps that is the reason why I went on living.
And my heart which had learnt how to love found love again. I met the most wonderful man who held my hand through years of heartache. We were best friends before we fell in love and so I actually never had to go on any dates to find him…! After 7 years of companionship, we got married. It took us so long because my heart was still in mourning and not ready to celebrate a wedding. And when we did get married it wasn’t a double wedding – the elaborate affair with two sisters marrying two brothers – quite the opposite, a simple wedding with two people committing to take care of each other’s hearts.

My husband & I occasionally talked about having children. But that conversation almost always ended in tears. Memories of my sister & me dreaming about raising our kids – 2 children each – raising them together remained sharply vivid. “They would all call you Choti Maa and me Badi Maa”; she would say– Choti meaning Younger and Badi meaning Elder in Hindi. “You will be responsible for raising them and I will be responsible – for spoiling them!” She would add, laughing her wise-ass dimpled-cheek laugh.

Another thing she was wrong about.

Last year, I came across a post on nextdoor.com from a woman – let’s call her Barb – looking for families to host international exchange students for a few weeks. I was recovering from a major illness and seeking companionship & community. I responded to her – Yes, we could do it. Barb wrote back – could we host someone for the entire school year? Ummmm.yes??!! Before my husband & I could over-think our way out of it, Barb came over and held our hands as we filled a loooooong application to become host-parents for a year. It was Aug 31st – the last day to apply, we submitted our application at 9pm Eastern. Within a week we were driving to JFK; welcome sign in hand. We met our “student”; a courageous young woman who had just flown half way across the world to spend a year with strangers she had never met. Over the next few weeks & months I came to know of Iara’s heart, her hopes, her fears and her intense zest for life that reminded me of my own when I was her age. Before I knew it, we were falling in love with each other. Before we knew it, we were becoming family that had somehow known & loved each other forever. The “student” was turning into “daughter”.

And before we knew it we had another one! Our second “student-daughter” arrived without even filing forms. One day while at work I got a call from Barb that another exchange student needed a home urgently and I said yes. I came home that day to find Sophie standing in my kitchen waiting for me. This time it didn’t even take weeks. Our hearts already opened from the love of our first daughter swiftly fell in love with our second. That was not the miracle. The miracle was that hers did too. The miracle is that both our daughters call us Mummy and Dada and mean it. The miracle is that we all recognize this extraordinary thing that has happened to us.

A few weeks ago I found myself telling Sophie the story of my sister and the brothers and the doorbell. As I was coming to the end, I found myself laughing. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be the brothers. Maybe it was meant to be daughters.“ I said. “And you didn’t even have to open the door; I was already in your kitchen!” Sophie responded cheekily and in perfect sync – just the kind of thing my sister would say.

So maybe all of it was true – BUT in its own unique way.
Love finds us in unexpected places. Life knows how to break our hearts but how to mend it too.
Maybe things just fall in place as Didi said – when the time is right.
Maybe – Didi was right.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. Her work has been shown on national TV in the US and in India, at film festivals across the world, and won many awards including the “Most Important Video of the Year” award from CNN-India. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com