Stand-In Sisters
Tune into the latest episode of the podcast where Becky Morquecho joins to chat about the challenges of food restrictions and what they’ve taught her about hospitality.
My nine-year-old daughter picks up the Tin Can, our new but old-looking landline, and dials “Mem 4.” Her friend Jojo is spending the night soon and she needs to know if Jo prefers a cot or the top bunk. She picks the top bunk. Click. Vera calls back five minutes later, “What do you want for dinner?” She reclines in the second-hand swivel chair—the same chair I rocked her in now barely holds her lanky legs as she kicks them up, crossing her ankles on the nearby piano bench like some teenager. With a small whiteboard on her lap and a dry-erase marker in her hand, Ver takes notes as her friend puts in requests: “rice noodles, any fruit but dragon fruit, tater tots.”
We meet in the Valley Thrift parking lot to get Jo. Her sister Nori, who’s two, runs to me as I crouch down, slamming her tiny body into my chest. She’s wearing a yellow t-shirt I bought for the hope of a second child we didn’t have. Maybe a sister? It says, “Never Grow Up.” I recently gave it to my friend Chels for the baby of our families. I hold her sunshine girl for a delightfully long time, then we all head in to thrift before I take Ver and Jo home.
All three girls come with me to shop for dresses, shorts, and hats. Minutes later, Ver and Jo go with Chels to look at books; Nori stays with me. In the half-hour we’re in the store, we mix and match sisters and moms. A seamless dance that showcases the tight-knit bond built between our families—all the overnights, the camping trips, and countless hours spent in each other’s homes—as if the girls are cut from the same cloth and can be sewn back together in all sorts of ways.
//
I’m the new kid at school, halfway through sixth grade. I meet Ashley who’s a year younger and find out that her mom recently died. I know nothing of what she’s been through. I only know that she has flowing hair and seems nice and I can’t imagine my mom being gone. Even though I still have my parents, I feel lost too. Will anyone like me? Is there a place for me here? Before long, Ash and I leech on to each other. We crash into puberty and crushing on boys, together. We absorb her into our home, into our family, as if my parents are sometimes hers too. We bake one too many boxes of brownies and listen to Delilah After Dark on my black Koss stereo that sits on a bookshelf with hearts cut out on the sides. We morph from lost girls to tomboys to daydreamers to pre-teen shoppers buying Lorrie Morgan’s greatest hits album at the Mall of America, together.
//
We hardly make it through the front door and Ver and Jo are fizzling like pop rocks. We place a small dish of blue and orange candy melts in the microwave. Vera dips pretzels in the warm swirled sugar and Jo douses each one with sprinkles. While their confetti colored treats cool, the girls boogie. I hand them wooden mixing spoons to double as microphones—a move I so vividly remember my mom introducing to me. They slide across the tile floor in their socks, hair flying as they whirl, catching glimpses of themselves in the picture window. I load the dishwasher shaking my hips, too, hoping this moment impresses their souls, as they shimmy to their own sacred song, beaming at their bright spirits reflecting back at them in the glass.
//
Clinique make-up bags and bobbie pins cover the counter. Four of us sixteen-year-old girls smush our bodies and anticipation into my friend Laura’s bathroom to get ready for homecoming. My dress is stretchy faux velvet, a deep emerald green. My hair is unnaturally blonde from drenching it with Sun-In all summer long. The getup errs on manufactured, but the friends are real gold. The four of us do everything together, traveling like a pack of puppies from one person’s house to the next, to school to volleyball practice to the mall to dances to sleepovers to pool parties. From girls to young women.
A couple years later—the summer after freshman year of college—I get a job with a landscaping company as a “flower planter.” I heard you can make killer overtime and get an even better tan. At orientation, a girl named Rachel sits at my table. We spend the next three months driving a box truck stacked with flats of petunias, geraniums, and snap dragons around Southeastern Wisconsin, singing to Usher and Lifehouse, beautifying McMansions with our newfound flower planting skills and planning what we’ll do over the weekend.
Twenty years later, Rach flies to California to see me, a fortieth birthday present from her family. Strolling along oceanfront sidewalks, we call out the names of each flower we see. Of flowers we planted summers long ago. We still got it. And we still got each other. She gushes over my daughter. I somehow feel more at home—in my own home—when she’s there. When we get back from dropping Rach off at the airport, Vera and I lay on the guestroom bed, melancholy, already feeling like a piece of us is missing.
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The girls think they’re sly, scouring the house for throw pillows and blankets, swiping the last set of extra sheets from the linen closet. I walk into Vera’s room twenty minutes later expecting to find a fort. Instead, for now, they’ve piled everything on the rug in the middle of her floor. Jo encourages Ver to fall onto the fluffy mountain without using her hands to catch herself. There are so many soft layers, thick and puffy pillows. I know she’ll be fine. I stand on the other side of the wall listening, curious if my daughter feels safe. Curious if she’ll buy into this game of trust.
Three, two, one…
I peek around the corner, and see nothing but feet in the air.
The girls play woodshop and build houses made of oak branches. They snuggle our outside cats and pretend they are cats, basking in the sun. We turn off every light inside except for the disco ball flashing cheap thrills through plastic prisms on the mantel. I’ve let them stay up late and it’s time to brush teeth and get in bed.
“Becky, can you braid my hair?” Jo asks.
I gently brush out her tangles, the last bit of proof of a successful sleepover. I divide the sections of her long light brown hair. One section over the next. Just like I braided Laura’s hair for volleyball games. Just like I’ve braided Vera’s a thousand times before. All the way down to the bottom.
My daughter watches in the mirror. When I’m finished, she asks, “Can I have one, too, Mama?”
Two girls with braided hair and happy hearts climb into their bunks. Jo is closest to the ceiling, just like she requested over the phone. Vera is snuggled into her usual spot. My delight is tinged with a bit of sadness as I think to myself, this is what bunk beds are for.
//
My journey to motherhood isn’t going according to plan. My calendar is dotted with baby showers, but my hope that I’ll ever have one feels empty. I’m grateful my friend, we’ll call her Stacy, understands my ache. I meet Stacy at the lake to walk. We expose our fears and angst and jealousy in the heat of the California summer sun. But it’s not the rays that burn off the loneliness; it’s the solidarity. Months and years pass like this. By a miracle of miracles, we both end up with babies in our arms, in different ways. Eventually, we meet at the lake to walk with my dark-haired girl and her white-haired boy in tow, marveling that they’re here now, with us. Marveling that we made it, together. We wrap an arm around each other as we walk, laughing with relief and gratitude.
//
Jo and Ver sit at the kitchen table, adorned with paper, pencils, and popcorn. The house is silent, a stark contrast from the party that took place in the living room the night before. The girls’ braids are loose from a morning spent outside; the bottoms of their socks, basically black.
Sitting side by side in a comfortable quiet, they snack and sketch cute frogs holding umbrellas. Friendships aren’t always rainbows and raves. Sometimes we simply need someone to be near. Ver swings her feet under the bench she shares with Jo. Happy to be making art. Happy to be eating her favorite snack. Happy to have one of her favorites within arm’s reach.
//
It’s November and the wind off the ocean slices through our sweatshirts. But Chels doesn’t budge. The cold can’t keep her from listening. I let the shock of losing yet another baby fly in the brisk breeze between us. The final shot at a sibling for Vera. What I thought God had been saving up as the grand finale is, well, nothing but the dust of more disappointment disintegrating from my dry bones. “We’ll come now,” she told me. And they did. And somehow, even though my grief is fresh, I feel like I can breathe now that she’s here. Somehow, after sorting through what-should-have-beens, we are still able to laugh. How lucky am I to have a friend—a sister—who always points me back to beauty, light, and laughter. Even when the dark feels debilitating.
//
We drop Jo with her family at a different parking lot and we’re back to the three of us—my husband, Vera, and me—our little trio that sometimes seems too small. Ver doesn’t want to go home. I remember how it felt when Rach left, so we stop to get sorbet instead. Eventually, we have to go home. My dark-haired girl flops on the couch. No words. No smile for the rest of the day. At bedtime, we’re back in the bathroom where I braided two heads of hair the night before. Vera tells me she wants to play woodshop the next day and before I can respond, tears burst from her eyes, “But I don’t have anyone to play with!” My worst fears, our collective loss, now streaming down her face.
I sit on the edge of the tub holding her, smushing our deep aches and wet cheeks together. I tell her that when I was her age—and before and after that—my friends were my sisters. I say I’m so sorry she misses Jo, that I miss Ash and Rach, too. I wish I could see Chels and Stacy more often. I tell her we can’t always choose what our families look like but we can choose our friends—and our friends can be our sisters.
I let a few minutes go by. We take a deep breath together and we even laugh about something funny Nori said. Eventually, after more tears from both of us, we close our eyes and sleep.
//
I walk into Vera’s room, duck under the sheet that’s draped from her bunkbed to the bookshelf, the remains of the fort the girls eventually built. I open her goldenrod gingham curtains, and the hope of a new day warms the white brick walls.
Ver asks me to help dress her stuffed animals for church. She asks me to stay and play. She asks me—without directly asking me—to be with her, like a sister would. And so, I do. The same way she did for me when we choreographed a cute little number to “Jingle Bell Rock,” beaming at our reflections in the kitchen window while singing into wooden spoon microphones, and when we rode scooters side by side across the old creaky bridge to the very end of the path, and when, just last week, we sat at the kitchen table typing stories and taking sips of steaming mint tea. As time ticks by, we show up, we laugh, we cry, we stay, we offer each other silliness, safety, and a place to belong—a person to belong to.
Yes, I am her mom. Yes, she is my daughter. But at this moment, like so many others, we’re also sort of like the sisters we never had.
Essay written by Becky Morquecho. Becky lives in rural Southern California with her husband, daughter, and goldendoodle and loves Jesus, thrifting, and giant Mediterranean salads. She believes there is beauty and light just waiting to be discovered—even in the most unexpected places—and writes about it often on Foraging Hope on Substack. Becky has essays in You’re In Good Company, and you can read more of her work on Coffee + Crumbs.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.
Hospitality without the hype. Friendship without the filter.
We wrote another book! You’re in Good Company: The Gift of Friendship, Motherhood, and Showing Up mixes personal stories, reflections, and helpful ideas, all based on the belief that hospitality doesn’t need to be perfect to matter. In this heartfelt collection of essays and recipes, we’re inviting you to rediscover—and even redefine—what hospitality can look like in a busy, lonely world. Hint: it looks less like glamorous dinner parties, and more like ordinary grace around the backyard fire pit. Pre-order today to get this book delivered to your doorstep on March 17, 2026!