A Nostalgic Birthday gift From My Little Sister

The last thing I expected to be gifted for my 28th birthday was a Nintendo Switch game about befriending dolphins in the deep sea.

(An old photo of my little sister [left], my nana, and me [right] on a family vacation)

Since the earliest days of childhood, my sister and I have always said we have a direct line to one another’s brains.

We didn’t say it as eloquently as that back then, and to be honest, we still don’t say it as eloquently as that now. Instead, we just look at one another and chant the phrase ‘connected by the brain’ in a robotic voice a few times, breaking up each chant with a couple beats of sound that can only be described as a single maraca shake.

‘Connected by the brain – chh, chh. Connected by the brain – chh, chh.’

If she had been standing beside me when I opened my birthday package from her, I probably would have busted out our little jingle. Because even though a pack of pastel highlighters and a Nintendo Switch game titled ‘Dolphin Spirit – Ocean Mission’ (rated E for everyone) were the last things I was expecting to see inside the box she shipped my way, it was clear she had been eavesdropping in my brain when she decided what to get me for my 28th birthday.

The same week her package arrived at my doorstep, I’d been silently thinking about all the hours we spent playing the pet simulation video game Nintendogs, tucked beside one another on the couch back in the early 2000s. I had the Dalmatian & Friends version of Nintendogs, and she had the Dachshund & Friends version.

We were esteemed dog groomers, trainers, and walkers, over-enunciating our obedience commands into our DS’s microphones and erratically tapping our styluses as we guided our dogs through tunnels and over jumps.

My sister still teases me for how I used to yell ‘SIT DOWN’ to my dog Daisy, a tinge of desperation in my voice because of how stressed I was at the potential of her mishearing me during a high-level competition.

We played that game for years, the two of us refusing to leave our dogs alone for any extended amount of time due to the game’s real-time structure. It was kind of like a Neopets or Tamagotchi situation, where if you left your little critter alone too long, you would return to it filthy, starving and maybe dead. I don’t remember Nintendogs being as dramatic as death, but I do think the dogs could run away if you were ‘neglecting’ them. And I can’t remember precisely when I stopped caring about the threat of Daisy running away.

Opening ‘Dolphin Spirit – Ocean Mission’ felt similar to that Christmas morning we unwrapped our Nintendo DSs and Nintendogs games. Except this time, Santa didn’t even need a letter explaining what I wanted. She just knew what I needed.

My sister has witnessed my fascination with water, with the ocean, and with lakes her whole life. She was there during my early childhood obsession with The Little Mermaid, watching me pretend to dive into a duvet pile on my parents’ king bed. She was there at the wave pool with me every Sunday, swimming at the bottom of the deep-end with flippers and our legs squeezed together to emulate a tail.

She was even there on the sectional with me as we watched every single show that was part of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. (One year, they even had a documentary trying to prove that mermaids were real, and the two of us sat at the edges of our seats the whole two hours it played).

Standing in my kitchen in Ontario on Monday night, more than 4,000 km from my sister in B.C., I felt so undoubtedly seen.

My sister knows I’m running this blog focused on re-centering joy in my life and she knows better than anybody my love for the water. So, she sent me a direct trip back to childhood, founded on one of my lifelong interests.

(A photo of Dolphin Spirit – Ocean Mission game play)

So, when I clicked the game card into my Nintendo Switch, I thought about Daisy.

I thought about her jumping all over the screen, barking in excitement at seeing me again, tail wagging so fast there was a motion blur on it.

After all this time, she hadn’t ran away.

She knew that I would be back in some shape or form.