amity just texted me to tell me my favourite movie, E.T. is on television. which is rather apt because i just got off the phone with my sister.

Back in 1982 when I was 9 and my sister was 4, my parents took us on a cross-country camping trip for our summer holiday. We went camping for 3 months, from Massachusetts to California and back. And while as an adult, I am ever-so-grateful to have had that experience, at the time, I was pretty annoyed – as any nine year old who had to spend the summer doing “educational” things would be.

So then, we got back from camping, and went back to class in the autumn, my friends were all asking, “Have you seen E.T., have you seen E.T.??!!” Because seeing E.T. was apparently *the* only important thing to do that summer, and it was one of the first summer blockbusters ever. I, being stuck in a tent for 12 weeks, had missed out on THE seminal cultural experience for my peergroup.

And since videos didn’t even really catch on for several more years, I didn’t actually see it until I was about 15. My sister and I finally saw it for the first time together… and, being 10, she cried. And I just can’t bear seeing her upset, I’ve never been able to stand seeing her in pain – when my little sister cries, I cry reflexively. So I cried, she cried more, which made me cry even harder…

She and I continue to cry every time we see it, in a kind of unspoken empathic response – much like the one that exists between elliot and e.t. in the movie. When it was re-released in 2002 for the 20th anniversary, we went to the movie theatre together to watch it on the big screen for the very first time. Within minutes of the opening credits, at the scene where E.T. gets left behind by his spaceship, I glanced over and saw her chin beginning to tremble in the darkness, and that was it – we both ended up sobbing our way through the entire movie.

And since my move to the UK, it has become a kind of symbollic metaphor for our relationship – my needing to leave, her wanting me to stay, the bond that exists at the core of us making parting deeply painful, but our lives inexorably drawing us in different directions. she is my elliot, and i am her e.t. and just as in the climactic scene of the movie, when e.t. says “come”, and elliot says “stay”, no matter how far away i may go, i need only remind her that “i’ll be right here”.

And that’s why I love E.T., and why i can’t help but cry every time i see it – as I am doing now. because my sister is so very important to me, and because it always makes me think of how very much I love (and miss) my sister.

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