Today is my younger sister's 27th birthday. I've blogged a lot about my relationship with my sister. We're very close as adults, and I treasure our relationship. But I also treasure her as an individual. Even if she were not my sister, I would be totally impressed with her. She's smart, hard-working, committed, loyal, and loving.
Laura and I were very close as young children. We shared a room for many years, and, as the sisters of two brothers, spent all our time playing with each other. I often didn't have friends my age living near us (or maybe I just didn't have friends? -- but that's a whole other post), so I often played with my sister and her friends. My mother credits me with teaching her to read through our playing school, and I credit Laura with earning us the closest thing we got to an allowance by charging my parents their spare change to eat plastic steak or watch our synchronized swimming routines in the pool. Laura is terribly silly, one of her best traits. She was classic for interrupting our parents in the midst of a lecture to ask about the meaning of a word, which made them laugh and ended our punishment.
We went through our phase of sibling rivalry when she was in college and I was just out. Somehow, though, we ended up in the same profession -- she is also an English teacher, though, I am reminded daily, a better one than I ever was -- and we got married around the same time. And our relationship strengthened and drew us ever closer. Laura has had her own specific challenges in the recent years, ones which out of respect for her privacy I will not detail here. They were of the kind that could have really strained our relationship. But instead she left her heart open, and we are now probably closer than ever. She loves my child like her own, and is in fact Oliver's guardian in our will. We're presenting together at a conference in February, and I'm really looking forward to a girls' weekend (no husbands, no baby!).
Laura and I are as different as we are alike. We've made very different life choices, and disagree about things large and small. But we love each other in the way I think every mom dreams her daughters will love each other. We would do just about anything for each other. We send each other packages of goofy gifts just because, and we call each other and leave silly messages on each other's voice mail. She calls me to tell me that White Christmas is on or because she's driving behind a car with a Snee Farm bumper sticker (our nemesis swim team when we were younger). She still makes me laugh.
Laura is a great daughter, a great wife, a great beagle-mom, and a great teacher. I'm lucky to call her my sister.
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