SUZI: The best big sister a girl could have

I don’t really listen much to country music, but I do know that Reba McEntire has a song called My Sister, My Friend.  I sappily get a little misty-eyed when I listen to it.  I have a wonderful sister who has been my friend  my whole life.  Truly, I couldn’t ask for a better sister.

First off, we innately understand each other and things about our family that most others probably wouldn’t.  We lived in a unique culture in our home – a Czech home in a small, Mid-Missouri town.  I’d venture to guess that there weren’t too many others like that in Moberly.  So, we had a shared culture that others didn’t have.  It tied us together in more ways than I can describe.

Not only that, Lucy is nice.  Just plain nice.  She’s shockingly nice to me…and always has been.  Of course we had a tiff every now and again, but they were really, really rare.  Apparently when I was born she talked about me so much that her preschool teacher thought there might be something wrong with me.  Why else would a little girl talk about her sister so much?

In elementary school when I was sick and missed the day they explained how to alphabetize and I just couldn’t get it, she taught me how.

We played school and flashlight tag and Barbies…for hours.  When it was a rainy Saturday, we sorted our huge box of crayons (a cardboard box filled with end-of-school crayons) into separate piles of each color…pink, red, blue, green, yellow.  Then, we’d color until our pages were full.

We had chats in the bathroom (where there was a heater so we could get warmed up a bit) and have spent countless hours on walks around our neighborhoods.

Even as adults, Lucy never ceases to amaze me by her kindness to me.  When I was young, every year our elementary school would hold a fair and would always have a cake walk.  I would use my tickets to enter the cake walk, and I never won.  Not one time.  I dreamed of hearing my number called and strolling over to the cake table to choose which one I would proudly carry home.  It never happened.  So, when Lucy and I worked at the same office at the University of Missouri, she organized a cake walk for my birthday.  Everyone in the office brought cakes; it was a complete surprise.  I happily walked away with four of them…my dream of winning the cake walk more than fulfilled!

See what I mean when I say she’s nice?  Who does these sort of things?  She makes you want to be a nicer person.

Here’s to the best big sister a girl could have.