Super Sister Celebrates 60!!

Wishing my first best friend a very Happy Birthday as she turns 60 next month. As her older (more mature) sister, I have been privileged to share some remarkable times with her and witness her growth and transformation over the past years.

As the baby of our family of four siblings, she was warmly welcomed when she arrived on December 12, 1960. I was gifted with an older brother and younger brother and then finally my sister! There is nothing quite as exciting as having a sister. We shared a bedroom growing up and countless nights talking to each other and sharing secrets. Brothers are great but I believe sisters have more of an emotional connection.

We share some great memories, a mixture of good and bad, just as everyone does with their families. My fondest memory is the trip our mother took us on to Ireland in June, 1977. We spent an amazing three weeks on the “Old Sod” visiting relatives and seeing historic sights. Since my sister is eight years younger than me, she was only 16 when we made the trip.

There were not a lot of automatic rental cars at that time in Ireland, so our Mom took up the driving duties on a small manual transmission car. She couldn’t really get used to driving “on the wrong side of the road” with the steering wheel “on the wrong side of the car.” Going through a town she grazed a car parked outside of a bar. She wanted to go into the bar to find the owner, but we urged her not to do it. We returned the rental car, and exchanged it for an automatic one that I drove for the remainder of our trip. Our Mom noticed a smell as we drove along and kept telling my sister and I that it was the turf burning in the homes we passed. Only later did we discover that it was the emergency brake burning because we don’t know it was engaged for the first week of our travels.

My sister is an amazing worker. In her early teens, she worked at a soda fountain in a drugstore. She made some amazing vanilla Cokes! During college she worked as a cashier at a supermarket and a meat store. When she graduated with an accounting degree she worked for a private foundation before beginning her career job in the financial department at Boeing. She worked there for thirty-five years, moving up the ranks to become a manager. During her Boeing years, she raised her two beautiful daughters.

She has always been there for me and supported me over the years. When my husband died, she drove from Pennsylvania to Maryland to accompany me to make his funeral arrangements and gave me sound advice and a shoulder to cry on. She drove to the cemetery in Pennsylvania and picked out a burial plot for him. I honestly could not have made it through that tragic time without her.

When our Mom couldn’t live alone any more, she welcomed her into her home and selflessly devoted herself as Mom’s caretaker. She made our Mom’s last year and a half a very happy one.

My sister is my role model, a can-do woman, a loving Mom, a great listener, and an all around fun person to hang out with.

Thanks, Mary Anne, for all the great memories! Looking forward, after Covid, to sharing more special times with you! Happy Birthday, sister!

Love,

Suzanne