IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to know what my five-month-old baby sister Maddie is thinking when my father places the family MacBook before her bemused face. She wriggles a lot and makes that cooing noise that babies do—the one that lodges an unstoppable bubble of affection in your throat. On the other side of the country, from what Google Maps tells me is exactly 2,875 miles away, I am perched in a similarly expectant position, ready to videochat with a baby who is so young she can just barely sit up by herself.

Maddie and I have engaged in videochat dates several times a week since the day she was born. She is my half-sister—we have the same father but not the same mother—and is the product of that undeniably modern love borne of divorces and remarriages and familial redefinition. If she had been born a few years earlier, in a time when I was more recklessly selfish and less family-oriented, I doubt I would’ve possessed today’s desire to play an instrumental role in her development. But now at 22, in a different city on a different coast, I often fall asleep aching to be close to her. Save the few times a year I fly back east, the ambient intimacy of videochat is the closest I get.

Maddie loves to watch Baby Einstein. Classical music and stuffed animals are a frequent Einstein pairing; fake ducks waddling across a white background make for an entire scene. But what seems like a bad LSD trip to adults is fascinating to Maddie; the second she hears the music begin, she bolts upright and is glued to the TV. With this kind of attention funneled towards television, I often wonder if she thinks of me as a kind of TV character.

Once, during one of our videochat sessions, my dad innocently joked, “She’s going to think you live in the computer!” The thought jarred me, and caused me to wonder if I was less of a person and more of a hologram to Maddie. To date, I have only seen her three times in person during her entire five-month life. Can a five-month-old child separate her sister’s likeness on a computer screen from the characters she watches every day on TV? If, to her, videochatting is nothing more than a virtual form of entertainment, how am I any different from an interactive version of Barney or Lamb Chop (albeit with a decidedly less annoying voice)?

Maddie, at five months

Maddie does react to our videochat dates with a higher level of enthusiasm than she does to Baby Einstein; as soon as she glimpses my face on the screen, she immediately begins smiling and giggling and babbling. I don’t know if she thinks of me in the same way she thinks of my dad and stepmom, two people she has formed bonds with for a host of reasons beginning with the fact that she sees them every day. Does she love me like them, or does she love me like an interactive toy? She is five months old and can’t yet speak; it’s impossible to know.

I suppose how she loves me is less important than that she loves me at all. While videochat is a less ideal medium than in-person would be, it’s a valuable one considering that I live 3,000 miles away. If we were not lucky enough to have laptops with cameras, or—god forbid—Gchat didn’t exist, our communication would be relegated to the phone, or even to pictures documenting her growth sent by my parents through the post. They do send pictures—and I frame and proudly display everything that they send—but to be able to watch her grow and mature myself, in real time, is an amazing thing. Over Thanksgiving, I spent a week with her, feeding her and playing with her and putting her to sleep. Though that was only a few weeks ago, I’ve witnessed how much she’s advanced even since then solely through our videochat sessions—she grabs now, with more intention; she can almost drink by herself from a sippy cup. Without videochat, stories of her development would have to suffice, but with it, I get to witness her grow and explore and giggle all from the comfort of my California bedroom.

SOMETIMES AT NIGHT I regret my decision to move so far away from my family, especially when there is someone so important to me who could benefit from my physical presence and not just my witty e-mails or lazy Facebook posts. But videochat has undoubtedly enhanced our relationship and made me capable of witnessing important moments that I couldn’t have otherwise; when Maddie ate her first real food, my Dad set my sister and I both up on separate MacBooks so we could Skype in and watch her get peas all over her face. It is moments like these that make me thankful for technology, moments that make me question the very human inclination to fearfully arch our spines and use terms like “ambient intimacy.” But the Internet has not distanced us or destroyed our sisterly bond; instead, it has augmented our connection. It has made it possible to be a good sister from 3,000 miles away.