For Cee-Bird

(So, her birthday isn't until Saturday, the 5th, but we'll be at the lake so I wanted to make sure I got this taken care of. This is a big birthday year for both of my siblings!)

Happy Eighteenth to my (not-so) little sister!

I can't believe she's an adult now, at least according to the people who regulate films and also the U.S. Constitution. It seems it can hardly be possible. Especially when I look at pictures like this:


I remember sitting on that same porch/deck/paved area of our house in Cumberland, Maryland pouting on the day everyone came to celebrate her first birthday. That first year wasn't easy. Though I loved having a baby sister, it meant my reign of six years as an only child was over and that was a hard adjustment. But as time drew on, I came to love and adore my fiery little sister, the princess, or "ornery" as she was sometimes called. (And who is still as fiery as ever.)

We are so very different in a million ways and yet sometimes I find myself taken aback by the similarities we share. And I am grateful for both our differences and our commonalities. It makes us who we are.

And now she's not a little girl or just a teenager. She's eighteen. And those early-nineties puffballs in the snow are all grown up and either dipping their toes into (in the case of Cearra) or barely up to their knees (in my case, having only recently turned twenty-four) in the sea of adulthood. And more than ever now, they are friends.


And for that I am incredibly grateful.