My Sister

    For some reason I have really been thinking about my sister today.  I'm not sure why, maybe I'm missing her.  We don't see each other very often, she lives 10 hours away.  It's difficult for her to get down our way.  When she does come home her time is packed in tightly.  There is just not enough time.  I should make more time to call her, but we both have busy families.  Her kids are involved in competitive sports that tie up a lot of week-ends.  My four kids keep my hopping all day, and at night when  I do get five minutes of peace and quiet, I feel like it's too late to call.
   Growing up life always seemed to come easy to Mandy, it probably didn't, but to me it always seemed like it did.  She was adorable when she was little, and everyone thought that she was the cutest thing ever.  I had some insane need to fight the powers that be ( I fought my poor parents on everything), Mandy seemed to get everything by simply just smiling.  Mandy was naturally small, naturally thin, naturally blonde, naturally athletic, naturally popular, naturally everything that I was naturally not.  It burned.  In high school the guys that I liked called our house to ask Mandy out, oh how it burned.  It wasn't her fault, but I resented it.  At this point I would like to share the life lesson that I learned from all of this, but there really isn't one.  I learned to put on my big girl pants and suck it up, does that count as a life lesson?  We grew up.  We went our separate paths in life.  In childhood our paths were so different, but after high school they became more similar.  Mandy went to the same university that I went to York.  She got married, had kids.  She became a stay-at-home mom.
    When we were in that horrendous accident that forever changed my life, my little sister hopped on a plane to be with us.  We had our accident 4 days before Christmas.  Mandy left her husband, her 4 year old daughter, and her two year old son to be here with us.  Gabe died Christmas Eve.  I was in hospital with a ruptured spleen that did not want to stop bleeding, but more I had a broken heart .  She spent the most miserable Christmas of my life with my children, ensuring that Santa came that year, giving them happiness.   Even if I had been home I could never have done that, not at that time.  How do you ever thank someone for that?  I will be forever in her debt.
  She has just finished an early childhood educator program at college.  I am so proud of her.  She worked so hard.  She was one of the oldest people in her class, yet she didn't let it stop her,  I'm not sure I could be that brave.  She has an 8 year old and a 12 year old, goes to school and still manages their schedule.  I am really proud of my little sister.
    I need to call my sister, I miss her.