Tomorrow is my oldest sister's birthday. You would hardly see her as "old" if you met her on the street and most people, though fully cognizant of her powerful self, see the impish, fun-loving leprechaun beneath the porcelain skin and dark eyes. Few people even notice that she is small. No sirree.
My sister took me with her to Cloverleaf Ranch bonfires when I was very young and I got to experience being part of a summer camp that we could never afford. My sister brought me along as she worked as a student nurse and her sweetness still makes me smile every time I drive past Cloverleaf. I was so lucky to have gone backstage with her. Free candy too!
I have been the fortunate one, to have had a sister who came when our mother's alcoholism was at it's bitter journey's end and attempted to help me escape the horrifying darkness under which I had lived while Helen cast off every single bit of humanity for some bourbon and coke. My sister helped me crawl through the window and no one else would.
I was held up by my sister as I came to stand beside our father's bedside in intensive care as he struggled to come out of having one of his lung's removed due to cancer. He was in so much pain, having had his sternum sawed open and then put back together with staples. My knees went week and I was slayed that the man who was always so angry at the dinner table was crying out in pain. My sister held me up and no one else did.
Many years later all three daughters stood on a small yacht in the San Francisco bay, fog surrounding us as we ebbed in the tide below the Golden Gate and began to scatter my father's ashes. We were all weeping, casting colorful, long-stemmed roses overboard with the last of Frank's remains and my sister began to read what she had written for our father. She stopped, began to cry and asked me to read her words. A freighter passed by and filled the air with her ship's horn and we all started laughing. Yet, I remember that my sister had written that she was the shortest sister, after all. At that moment, on the deck of that ship, in the fog, in the moment that was surreal in so many ways, I thought, "huh?"
Life has a way of changing course and some of us struggle. That is my story to be sure. However, my sister works so very hard in her profession, for her children who do not even seem to understand who has their back, for her friends and those she loves in spite of themselves. My sister is big. Very big.
Happy Birthday Sis. Thinking of you and looking up!
