"Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you." -Walt Whitman
Top Reasons It Is Awesome My Sister is 25.
She’s still got a lot of time to live in fun places I can go visit.
Now she is the same age I “was” at a bar in Nice!
And are both finally closer to thirty than we are to twenty! Misery loves company!
If we ever have to rent a car, she can still do the driving and I can still do the drinking!
Catching a Laina-saurus is still just as funny as it was when she was 24.
In dog years, she’s still only 3 ½, and she sure was a cute 3 ½ year old.
25 won’t stop us from going to things like Finding Nemo and The Princess and The Frog in theatres!
She is still in school, which leads me to believe one day she’ll be able to repay me.
If she is 25, then Zak must be almost 21!
It’s unlikely that this will cause her to stop randomly translating what I say into French just for practice.
She’s still going to love the card and present I sent to Boston so it will be there waiting on her.
She’ll still be able to drink her weight in iced coffee.
We will all still hear the words “inappropriate” and “unfortunate” at the most opportune moments.
Ok, seriously. That list was fun and all, but there’s too much stuff on there that involves all of us, and really, it’s her birthday. My sister is the best. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be stuck between me and Zak, but Renée does it. And loves it. She does whatever she wants, or whatever other people want, and is happy. She can hang out with anyone, talk to anyone, and quickly become basic friends with anyone. A good example of this: she came up to Asheville a few weekends ago and was forced to hang out with me and a bunch of people I had just run through the water drainage system with for like 6 hours. She pulled it off just fine. She has so many friends. Beyond that, she has close friends everywhere. Renée has been in more weddings than anyone I know and probably will ever know. She handles horrid situations with grace and poise and is fantastic at making everyone else comfortable. She’s always got your back, even when you’re wrong, and even though she says I’m the smartest a lot, I’m pretty sure she is a lot smarter than I am.
My sister is one of the funniest people I know and I wish we weren’t both so damn busy so we could talk and text more often. Renée is also one of the most responsible and mature people I know. She is both respectful and respectable. She listens to great music, because she’ll take mine, Dad’s, and Zak’s advice on it, but also go off and find her own. She is open to any possibility.
It is shocking to me to know how much she has changed in the 25 years that I have known her. This is neither good nor bad, though I’m sure in some way, she’d say it’s only good. I simply mean that it is so interesting to see the progression that she has gone through to become the incredible woman that she is today. It’s hard to even remember sometimes that she’s had several unfortunate haircuts when now she is always gorgeous, or that she once punched a boy in the face for being a jerk when now…well I guess if he really deserved it, she’d probably still do that. It’s hard to recall what her voice used to sound like, which is why we call them Laina-sauruses and not Renée-osauruses, when now she is so well spoken and eloquent. I still giggle when I think of some of the nicknames she gave herself and the ones she grudgingly embraced, when now her beautiful name fits her so perfectly.
I am in so many ways jealous of my sister. She followed in a lot of my footsteps and then suddenly branched out. But it’s more a sense of pride than anything. I love knowing I have seen the entire life of this beautiful person.
I got back to myself there for a minute. Forgive me.
If you know my sister, count yourself among the lucky ones. I do.
Happy birthday, Renée Alaia. I love you.