Simplifying… me

Okay, I started off writing this morning’s post about my one year blogging anniversary, which is tomorrow (quite a week for anniversaries!).  However, after breaking up a few dozen sibling disputes over the course of an hour, my train of thought has been derailed, and I have found myself thinking about sisters.  My sister, to be exact. 

 

Her name is Jen, and today is her birthday.  I won’t tell you how old she is, even though she would have NO PROBLEM declaring my age for all to hear – she’s just that thoughtful and sweet. 

 

Jen has always been my partner in crime.  We were souly responsible for shaking a bottle of baby powder into the engine of my grandfather’s brand new riding lawn mower, which – fortunately for us - we were little and cute, and he didn’t kill us.  In the early days of itinerating, we stood side-by-side declaring, “Bwana sifiwe” and sang Amy Grant’s “I Have Decided”, making our mom so proud.  We taught Sunday school to masses of Kikuyu children on a weekly basis, and played “Kikuyu mamas” when we got home from church, wrapping our baby dolls on our backs with kikois.  We lived out brief but exciting careers as models.  We’ve been chased, on foot, by a herd of elephant, and we’ve been reprimanded in the Amsterdam airport because we tried to order Toblerone without nouget and honey.  We’ve stood up to mean girls, body surfed in the Indian ocean, helped our mother lug ten, fifty pound, carry on bags across the world (which I am convinced they made the “one carry on per person” policy in her honor), and live for pedicures and coffee talk.  We fought over boys, and cried over boys, took boys’ names and spit them out in vain, supported and held each other through bigger heartbreaks and sorrows than middle school crushes.  Jen has been my very best friend from the time we could recognize each other, and when I need a good dose of unedited reality, she’s the one I call.

 

Jen, we are as different as day is to night.  You are the wild and outspoken, and I am the steady and true.  I am so grateful that God put us in the same family.  You are a strong and giften woman, someone I truly admire and aspire to be like.  And nobody, and I mean nobody, can pull off  the White Christmas “Sisters” song like you and me, babe (believe me, I’ve heard others try).  We nail it every time.  

 

Happy Birthday, Jen!

 

Sisters.  Sisters.  There were never such devoted sisters!

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