My Sister

I love the way my only sister moves through her family.  In that special way she has. Confident, loving, funny. We are so different, she and I. But delight in the samenesses we uncover in each other. We are nearly fourteen years apart in age, she the youngest, I the eldest with four brothers in between us.  So we only discovered each other in adulthood. I had to wait a long time.

She has four adult children and a good solid marriage and one of those old houses that shoots out wings everywhere. I've said to her I could hide myself in here for a week and you wouldn't find me. 

She's more like our mother than I am. For instance, show her a piece of water, anywhere, and she will strip to her "togs" and dive in. Our mother would do that. I tell her this on our most favourite strand in the whole wide world when she emerges from a dive. She is delighted. She knew only a sickly mother. I knew one who sang in pubs and dived off piers and rocks at the drop of a hat and could embroider anything, anywhere.

We love to host and feed crowds in our houses. That we do well. We gloat in this commonality. We also sing a song together that we didn't know was each others' favourite until we performed it together in a pub one night. "Summertime".

She tells me she wasn't born with one bone of creativity in her body while I got it all. I tell her she has had a successful marriage and career along with raising four amazing children who love to come and hang about in the home she and her husband have created. A warm and welcoming place.

We all have our gifts. And sometimes we can overlook them. We need reminders of how absolutely bloody marvellous we are.

And darling sister, you are amazing.