They Say It's Your Birthday

You know I always have to write about my sister on her birthday. This year she would have been 59 and I'm sure her platinum blonde hair would have had to have started showing some gray, finally. But, it would be hard to see. I know that many people thought she colored that hair, but she didn't. It was just a fabulous blonde all bestowed on her by Mother Nature. Clairol and L'Oreal should be so lucky.

I thought about her all day. We were on a field trip and the bus driver was an especially nice woman. Trish was a bus driver, too. She loved that she had the same job that our dad had all those years. It was a great day for her when she got to drive him on her route. My parents were visiting, and she invited him along. Isn't is fun when we can treat our parents to an experience of our own childhood?

I've probably told all the stories about her too many times. But, if we don't keep telling the history of loved ones, then someone might forget. This winter when I went to Oregon to visit my daughter, one of our fun adventures was to visit the Tillamook cheese factory. I got to recount cow milking adventures, and in the gift shop, I found an awesome mouse pad with a beautiful photo of a doe-eyed Jersey cow that looked just like my sister's pet cow Malice. So, of course I bought it. I wanted so much to be able to mail it to her, and then call her on the phone and laugh with her about it. It sits on my souvenir shelf in my bedroom because no one else can appreciate it quite like she would have.

Her grandchildren are growing up and are so delightful. I know she can admire and guide them from heaven, but I still feel so sad that they are missing out on her love and adoration in person. Not to mention her fantastic culinary treats. I never eat baklava without thinking of her.

So, that's pretty much it. Another birthday comes and goes and I can't send a snarky card, or call her up to chat. I can't drop by her house and admire her flower beds and marvel at how she kept everything so astonishingly clean and neat (I have obvious dust on my furniture and I need to hire someone to come and really scrub my kitchen cabinets.) No one gets zucchini bread---with homegrown zucchini--anymore. And no one can pronounce the name of that wacky cat she loved when we milked cows. I can't even spell it because it wasn't a real word.

On the field trip, we went into an old barn that is part of a whole group of buildings that tell the history of the county, and there was a stall with an old automatic milker, some milk cans and a cream separator. The students were asking me what it was and how it was used. I tried to tell them in as few words as possible, because even when I explained, they weren't sure what I meant. But, Trish and I would have looked at that paraphernalia and been transported back to teenager life where we spent so many hours bonding in the barn. Maybe that's part of the reason we felt so close---shared drudgery. We carefully didn't marry dairy farmers, either of us. But, I know she felt like I felt: all that hard work turned us into the women we became who were never afraid of hard work or a big challenge. Maybe that's the beauty of sisters. You don't have to explain yourself, ever.

Here's how loyal she was: in the photo, she is being held up by our brother and our mom because she was only a fews days out of a surgery to replace her knee joint. Why was she hobbling off to the temple with a newly reconstructed knee?? Because my daughter was getting married, and CoolGuy and I were being sealed to our children. She wouldn't have missed it. She would have come on a stretcher if she'd had to. That's just what sisters do---this one for sure.