My girls speak a language all their own. Before Melia could say Zoe’s name, she called her “Baby”. She just knew Zoe was the one in the family closest to her.

I am an only child. I don’t understand what I am seeing, I only know it’s happening. And I never knew it until Melia started talking. She would say things I couldn’t understand (she still does).

Like this: “I wanna seh levan!” Melia said in the car last week. Bread levened? Huh? “Baby, I don’t know what you are saying!” I reply to her. Zoe sat next to Melia in the car, looking out the window. She didn’t bat an eye when she said to me “She wants to go to 7-11, Mom.” Oh, okay. Sorry.

I drive in the direction of the convenience store, thinking about all of the women I know who are so close to their sisters. I don’t know any woman with a sister who doesn’t speak to her sibling almost daily. I know twins who won’t take leave of each other, even when one went on her honeymoon.

Lying in bed last Friday night, family snuggling as ritual dictates, Melia said what I interpreted to be “I want monkey cheese.” “You want…monkey (monkey?) cheese?” She wants monkey cheese. Is that like head cheese but more exotic? Could be fatigue, could be I am losing my hearing like my father and his brothers, but I couldn’t decipher “monkey cheese.” “Mom, hello! She wants mac and cheese. Why can’t you even understand her?” Zoe asked me, a little too teenagerish for my liking.

I guess because I don’t have a sister, I don’t share the bond you two do, I wanted to say. She wouldn’t get it, but she already knows. This is why Zoe insists they wear matching clothes whenever possible. This is why Zoe takes so much time and care drawing Melia into the family portraits she does at school. This is why Zoe charges me like a pissed off bovine animal and kicks me like a mule when she feels I have unjustifiably scolded her 3 year old baby sister.

I’ve given birth to two girls - sisters first, daughters second, or so I think it will go. So I am hoping. I don’t mind if they don’t call me everyday when they’ve left the nest. But I want them to maintain their current supernatural, psychic sense about each other. It starts with language, it becomes identity. It’s one of the things I am discovering and loving about what I’ve created.

It was a humorous moment when I discovered Zoe was Melia’s translator. I had taken my lip gloss away from Melia (I see them sharing makeup for sure), and she hid behind the couch, saying what I thought was “stupid hassle.” Yes, indeed a hassle, I thought. Always trying to keep you two out of my makeup. I’ve surrendered my Italian heels to you, what more do you want? But why, who am I kidding, why would a toddler say “stupid hassle”?

I paused and asked Melia, “What did you just say? I missed it.”

“She called you a stupid asshole,” Zoe told me. When Zoe said that, she had a look on her face, like she wasn’t afraid she’d be disciplined for saying a bad word. Like she was just…doing her job.

Where did Melia hear “stupid asshole”? I wondered.

Well, my two little girls may be closer than I can ever imagine, but they sure display traits of the people they came from.

And the language of sisters may not always be G rated, we’ll find that out in a few years undoubtedly…but it will always, effortlessly, be understood.