As I unlocked the front door to my apartment, Lannie was chattering away. She gleefully said, "I like Ry-Ry. He's funny. And his eyes are my favorite color."

"You already have a nickname for him?! I thought that was our thing" I teased, tickling Lannie.

She giggled and said back, "Yes, but you will always be my favorite Bosie." She gave me a sloppy kiss. Lannie was too smart, already melting my heart. She had me wrapped around her little finger.

"Okay. I forgive you," I said kissing her back. I set her down shaking my head, "Okay, so what do you wanna do Lannie."

"I wanna paint Bosie! Please, please, please!!!" she clapped.

"Okay, okay Ms. Princess, no need to yell. Let me go and get the paints. Can you go and get some paper?" I asked.

Already running across the living room, she hollered "Yes!! I got it" louder than before.

How this three-year-old had so much energy at 10 pm marveled me.

I pushed open the door to my room and opened the deep mahogany wood armoire that sat next to my bed. It belonged to my mom and was one of the few things that I was able to keep when I lost the house. 

The wood was flaking in some places, dented in others, and scratched throughout, but my mom never threw it out. 

She used to say, "A family of trees gave its life to make this armoire. Cut down, splintered, stained to become something that we could fit inside our home. Now a little beat up, it looks more like the tree it came from the least we can do is honor the life that was sacrificed."

I never really understood her attachment to it, but when it came time to sell the house, I couldn't let go. And now, in my dingy little room, the armoire stood, with more flakes, dents, and scratches than before.

I yanked at the door, looking for the paints I had promised Lannie. The shelves were overflowing with clothes, music sheets, journals, and books, but the art supplies were nowhere in sight. 

I swore I had seen them somewhere in there...

On the very top of the armoire, I saw a small red tube of paints. I couldn't quite reach the shelf, so I jumped a little, extending my arm. As I jumped again, barely reaching the tube, the whole shelf came down with a loud thud.

"Bosie! Are you okay?!" Lannie yelled, running into the room with paper crumpled in her hands.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Just dropped something, but I think I found your paints." I looked down to clean up the mess that I made when I saw something I thought I had lost for forever...

I gasped, looking down at the stacks of beautifully canvases sprawled out across my floor. Some of the paintings were large landscapes, others were smaller portraits. There were so many different styles, realistic, impressionist, abstract, etc. 

A couple of sketchbooks had also fallen and as I flipped through the pages, there were hundreds of charcoal sketches, watercolor paints, and line drawings. And at the bottom of each scrawled were the letters "EE."

Evalyn Epcot.

These were hers. My eyes welled with tears as my heart filled with relief. I thought I had lost these-all of Evalyn's beautiful work and talent.

I took in everything I was seeing and noticed a painting lying underneath the stack before me. It was a larger canvas, and unlike the other pieces, signed in this corner was "R&E."

Evalyn's forte wasn't music. It wasn't that she didn't try-she did. My dad and mom started early with her too, with the guitar, drums, piano, and nothing took. She started badly, and only got worse. 

They even tried with the triangle and harmonica, and somehow, even with those instruments, all that came out were shrieks. Singing was an even bigger failure- with her poor pitch, the notes always seemed to be off. 

But, she was such a good sport about saying that being the non-musical one in the family made her "unique." 

She loved music, just couldn't make it.

But she was so special in a different way- her gift was art. Her hands were her instruments, and her canvases were her music, the notes brought to life with the brushes, paints, pencils, and chalks that she created with. 

We discovered her gift pretty early on. Dad had left his guitar in the living room while Evalyn and I were fingerpainting. I was casually minding my own little painting when I heard dad rush into the room and yell, "Not the guitar Evie! Not the guitar!"

I looked up to see Evalyn, diaper-clad, with paint all over her bare chest, streaking red all across dad's baby; his Jasmine S35 guitar.

Evalyn was cooing and giggling with paint smudge all over her fingers and face. My Dad gently pulled the guitar away from her begging "Evie, sweet girl, please, my guitar, please..."

But when he went to wipe away the mess Evalyn had made, he stopped. "What is this?" he stared a bit shocked. "Is this is a...sunset?" Fingerpainted on the smooth maple wood were the warm colors of the sun, folding between the green hills beneath. There wasn't much detail, but the image was beautiful.

My dad smiled wide and picked Evie up. "My baby girl's an artist!!" he cheered. She began wipings her fingers across his face, red, orange, and purple coloring his face. They both were a bit of a mess, my dad yelling "A painter. Who would've thought! Born to two hippy musicians!" 

He was so beyond proud, and at just two-years-old, Evalyn had marveled us.

My Dad never did wipe away Evalyn's first painting. He wanted her to be a part of his music, and him a part of her art. And just like that, her painted fingers found a permanent place on his guitar. And that guitar became his favorite.

Evalyn was an incredible artist, not just in what she created, but the creativity that she believed everyone possessed. She was always trying to get me to paint and draw with her, but I was disastrous. 

Worse than even her singing. 

I could never get my hand to move the way I wanted, lines were crooked, paintings were smudged, colors always seemed to blend into a murky brown; I just got worse the more I tried. 

But Evalyn was relentless.

I came home one day, with the living room tarped out and a huge easel set up in the middle. The canvas in front of was split in half, with a small divider in between the sections. Evalyn was sitting on one of the two stools waiting for me.

"What's this...?" I asked warily, slowly approaching her.

"My next painting," she casually said. "And you're going to help me with it," she added.

I laughed saying "What makes you think I would agree to that? Besides Evie, I'm going to ruin it." She rolled her eyes as I continued "We've been over this, I suck."

"Rosie-please, how many times have I told, art is supposed to be beautiful to you, it's not for anyone else," she said encouraging me. "But that's not even the point here, this is going to be fun, I don't care if it's perfect."

"You say that now, but when it's finished and looks all screwed up..." I began to complain.

"I won't care. Let's call this sister's bonding," she winked.

I shoved her, sitting down on the stool next to her "I think we're close enough."

"Yeah, whatever," she said while handing me a smock. She began to explain the project, "So here's what we're going to do..."

Evie had split the canvas into two sides so that we could each create our own half of the painting. The two halves each painted would come together to create one, unified canvas.

We began by each painting one half of the beautiful sycamore tree Evie had sketched onto the canvas. I was periodically peeking over the divider, trying to see how bad I was screwing up and in turn Evie continuously smacking me with her paintbrush. 

By the end, I had all shades of brown and green splattered over my face.

But the painting of the tree was just the beginning. Evie had said, "Make each side something special. Add to the painting something that separates each side of the tree."

I sarcastically responded, "I don't think it'll be hard to tell who's side is who."

"Shut up Rosie," she said laughing at me. "It's not that bad," she remarked, peeking over the divide.

This time it was me who smacked her, splattering a deep olive green all over her face. "No peeking!" I mimicked, getting back to work.

And eventually, after five hours of laborious work and a slight bout of carpal tunnel, we were done. We gently removed the divider from the center of the painting. And very obviously, Evalyn's side was so much better. Her leaves were more vivid, tree trunk more realistic, and overall clearly more professional. 

My side was a bit sloppier, with fuzzier lines, more blobby, to put it nicely. Evie called it "impressionist meets fingerpainting." But somehow, the painting still looked incredible. It was like looking at the sycamore tree with two different lenses, but all captured in the same picture.

But what really made this painting special was a smaller detail. I painted a silhouette of an artist painting beneath the tree. It was supposed to be Evie in her element and honestly, with my skill, it wasn't exactly clear, but I tried my best. 

It must have been some sister telepathy or something, because, on the other side of the tree, Evie had painted me, or at least a silhouette. I was seated on the ground, back against the trunk of the tree strumming my guitar.

Evalyn and I weren't into sappy shit. We didn't do much of that, we expressed our love in more blunt ways. But looking at the painting, there was something really special there. It was like dad's guitar with Evalyn's fingerpainting, our art was so different, but it connected us. 

Something cliche like that. I truly felt the cheesiness, and it warmed my heart.

We stared up at the painting for a while, smiling at what we had created when Evalyn broke the silence. "We should sign it." I nodded back at her as she dipped her thin paintbrush into the black paint and handed it to me. We each signed at the base of the sycamore tree-the letters R&E.

That painting had always been my favorite. 

My memories were interrupted when I heard a soft snoring from beside me. I looked to see the source of the noise and found Lannie, asleep on her painted paper. She must have found the paints in the pile before me as the sheet in front of her was smudged in color. Even her face was littered with red and purple paint.

"An artist in the making," I mumbled, smiling to myself.

Just like Evalyn.