JOURNALING
A Letter to My Sister
You are my favorite superhero
I am sitting in your living room on the love seat going over the day in my head. You are back from surgery and getting some well deserved rest, and I am dumbfounded at the woman you are. I was tasked with caring for your beautiful boys and sweet Piper Faye (I gave your dog a middle name while you were in the hospital). I can’t believe how much work I still got accomplished while doing that, and I have contemplated throughout the day how you do it all. I am also wondering how long your husband will be before he brings home the last ingredient for the potato soup you wanted for supper. But honestly… I am marveling at you. Wonderstruck by you.
Bewildered and moved to tears at the sudden urge to write you a love letter. My fingers hover over my keyboard as I sit motionless, paralyzed by what to say. There is so very, very much I want you to know. But I will start by saying that never, not ever, has the foot of a woman better than you padded the soils of the earth.
I have known you all my life and have been rescued countless times by your devotion and selflessness. From the protection you provided me as a child to the bliss of Saturday morning dance parties to The Bodyguard soundtrack and Wayne Toups’ Fish Out of Water album, from the leadership of my Girl Scout troop to your enthusiastic shuttling to and fro’ and presence at softball or basketball games, from the times that I could not comprehend the care in your critique to the way you threw your plans off a bridge to babysit little girl me. You were Love communicated through egg rice and “Who’s my first little hungry tiger?” and French braiding and all the unfair responsibilities you had as a girl that you never once abandoned. Not once. Not a single, solitary time did you forsake me.
You probably remember when you gave me the ‘birds and the bees’ talk, appropriately sanitizing and being careful with my young mind, but acknowledging that I was probably a bit more inquisitive and observant than other littles my age. You cared for the blisters my jelly shoes left on my heels and typed out my ridiculous chatter as I dictated, though the seven-year-old storytelling must have annoyed or bored you to an innermost deluge of tears. Do you recall putting on your ‘kid gloves’ and soothing or consoling me to sleep with the furthest reaches of softness that humans are capable? I sure do. You didn’t once lose your patience, your temper, or your affections.
When you got married, I know you went into debt to inspire moments of happiness in my childhood. I watched my first movie in a theater with you, and I carried one of your handbags full of snacks we snuck into the cinema. We ate in actual restaurants. “It’s another Casa Ole’ day,” you would say with a toothy smile. Tony’s Pizza is where Amanda played with that stranger’s hair, and “McDonald’s is my kind of place, hamburgers in your face…” was a jingle you’d lead while making our way out the door. You mindfully furnished your home with a closet full of pillows and comforters to make sure we were cozy, and because we shared rooms or even beds at home, we got our own individual pallets at your house. I know now that most of these excesses went on credit cards.
I watched you yearn for a child for years before getting pregnant, and then I watched you become a champion for your first baby boy after he received the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder as a toddler. You didn’t miss a beat; you researched and learned as much as you possibly could. When he came home with fingernail marks in his arm after starting school, you gave up hopes for a career and assumed the role of educator, on top of your other responsibilities as a mother, wife, caretaker, church musician, and volunteer counselor. His first tonic-clonic seizure terrified you, but you pivoted and became his most perfect advocate and have spent decades finding and shifting to the most fitting cocktail to keep them to a minimum. You’ve found yourself in the depths of the internet into the wee hours of the morning though you had to get up and resume your role as cornerstone in the wall of your family.
I counted the years with you. When your second son was diagnosed with autism, I saw the attempt it made at cracking you, but never did you relent. There was more information every day. More to try. More to do. I didn’t understand what you were going through as I was so much younger, but I get it now, and I recognize the backseat you always contentedly took.
I witnessed you ceaselessly unearth nuggets of joy while grieving the life you thought your sons would have. You filled your days with homeschooling schedules, seizure medications, and insurance arguments and never buckled under the strains of sleep deprivation, concussions, or the sense of loss you felt on my nephews’ behalf. I’ve watched you lose friendships that fade over the years because your time is so divided, or because the friends could not or would not walk with you. You have never lost your faith or the sacred practice of it through all these years. Things seldom went as you hoped, but you didn’t shrug the massive, leaden load.
You are the reason I bend but never break.
You were finally blessed with a daughter, and I have watched you guide her into a young lady who is altogether lovely in every sense. She is talented, discerning, modestly beautiful, and so intelligent. She is a stunning mirror of your most extraordinary qualities. Do you realize that you have become the adult you would have felt safe with as a little girl?
You are the reason my heart stays open even when it would be less painful to close. An abiding reason I am giving and forgiving. A constant basis for any mercy anyone ever receives from me. If ever I am gracious, brave, resourceful, or strong, your example has been a catalyst. You are the the blood on our family’s doorposts, and you have been my redemption. How many crosses have you carried for me? You are salt, Christina. You are the love of God personified.
For all these and countless other reasons I can’t articulate or see through tears to write. For continuing to be my teacher and one of my most unwavering inspirations.
Thank you.
For mothering me when you had to, and all the times you didn’t have to but still did. When I was hard to love and impossible to understand.
You are my favorite superhero.
