a milestone

My sister, Pam, turned fifty today. 

All day long I kept thinking about when we were little and how our birthdays were like National Holidays to us, and remembering that we'd be getting ready for Pam's birthday party--pointy hats, neighbor kids.

Tonight they had us all to their house for a party.

My kids react to the idea of a trip to Pam's a lot like they would react to a trip to Disney.

They jump up and down, search for their shoes, race out to the car.  They look forward to these occasions with an abnormal amount of excitement, in part because of that trampoline, which they imagine Pam jumps on every day.

My grandkids are right there too--Pam and Paul's??   Yes!

There's the birthday girl right there in the purple t-shirt, her kid right behind her.  I wish I'd have cornered her for a better picture.

Here's Paul, her patient husband, an incredibly good uncle since he was hardly a teenager himself, helping Julia unpackage a fancy doll set.

We laugh about when he and Pam were dating and John and Dan were tiny, and one night Dan plopped a big naked doll on the couch next to him, missing a leg, and John threw a half-eaten apple over his head that then fell behind the couch.

All at once, he and Pam had to go for a walk.

Boy, do I understand.  Thank you for your love and endurance.

Here's my little sister, a mere 16 months younger than I am.

Look at her, those big dark eyes.

Where I was blonde and blue eyes, she was all with the dark hair and the big dark eyes, personality plus.  I was my mama's girl, but she was Dad's, up at 6 am eating toast with chocolate syrup with him for breakfast before work.

The idea of that still turns my stomach.  Six am?   Hershey's syrup on toast?

Never.

(This was way before Nutella, which I also do not eat.)

(Who are we kidding? I don't do anything whatsoever at 6 am.)

Here we are in matching outfits on the arms of Grandpa's chair.   This gentle man slipped away to heaven when he was not even old, just past 70.

Of course at the time 70 seemed ancient, but later on I realized how much he and we all missed out on.  He was gentle and kind and funny, a serious thinker with a big heart.

He was also a carpenter as well as a farmer.  My dad tells a funny story about a time when his dad was working on a church steeple with his partner in crime, and my dad and either a brother or cousin climbed way up there, and then were so overcome by the height of it all that they were on their bellies flat against the floorboards while Grandpa and his buddy pounded nails and chatted, high up in the sky.

Yes.

Or the time Dad and his brother were supposed to be helping with haying and along the way found the big lens from and old flashlight.   While they were riding on the back of the tractor with their uncle, they held the lens to the back of his neck and drew it to a point, and within seconds, the uncle was slapping his neck, thinking he'd been stung by a bee.

Their dad saw what they'd done and snatched the lens from them and threw it as hard as he could, way over in the weeds, angry, and ordered them to GO HOME.

They did, but they still searched around on the way until they found the lens in the tall grass.

Okay, that's the two of us in the tub, discreetly covered on the backside by Mom, who took the picture.

 And here we are with our BROTHER on EASTER.

And that's the end of that.

Pamela?   Thank you for being my sister, and for loving my family the way you do.  The kids all know you'd do anything for them, and I hope yours realize that about me.

A surprising number of people have no sisters at all.  That's kind of shocking for me to absorb, having had you the whole time.

No sister?  No one to love and hate and complain about and adore?  That's crazy.

Lucky me, having you.

Lucky all of us.

I hope the next fifty years are as much fun as the first.

And go look up Molly Shannon on SNL and get going on your KICK.

love you forever, Val