For Becky, On Her 60th Birthday

When I was a little girl you were mean.
Okay, not really mean. You just had a trajectory that wasn’t in line with mine. You were responsible -- I was aloof. You were goal-driven – I was fun-driven. You were the big sister – I was not.
But I need you to know that you were and are a great big sister.
I remember so many lessons you taught me: how to do my hair, how to clean a bathroom, how to get along with girls who weren’t easy to get along with.
I remember so many ways you inspired me: to play guitar, to go to college, to write.
So many of my firsts came from you:
My first bologna and paint sandwich-making lesson, my first night in a college dorm room, my first bridesmaid dress….
I remember we don’t come to the forest to kick the plants and that Edwin Garcia is one of the coolest guys in the world and that you don’t want a crucifix over your bed because you could never have sex with Jesus watching.
I remember my first bra was a hand-me-down from you.
And that I was too big for it. But it didn’t matter…it was a bra. It was yours. And I wore it to your high school graduation that was held outside in the football stadium and I stood up through the entire ceremony hoping that everyone would notice I was wearing a bra.
I remember you came to see me and my new baby and we took pictures of our little girls on the grass and on the bed and in each other’s arms -- all pink and pretty.
I remember you sent flowers every time you couldn’t make it to one of my rites of passage so that I would know you knew I was crossing to a new place.
I remember you sat with my girls in a Pizza Hut in Walsemburg for two hours waiting for me and my husband who were fighting through those early years of marriage and when we finally got there, you didn’t bitch me out.
I remember your face twisted and tight as you fought the grief at our mother’s funeral.
I remember your face beaming with the love of God as you took in all that the gifts of the Spirit at your candlelight.
I remember your face all happiness and pride and joy for me as I came up the aisle at Duke Chapel in my robes.
We have seen the best of times and the worst of times.
We have run from one another, run towards one another, run with one another.
We have lived lives, given lives, and handed lives off to the next generation.
We played together in that old dirt basement that still haunts my dreams with images of spiders and spooks.
We stood together surrounded by rocky mountains and sang songs and worshiped and prayed.
We flew together in a big yellow balloon over the land of enchantment – our very own tierra madre.
And, like starlight, we go on.
We are daughters. We are wives. We are mothers. We are grannies -- but not old and angry ones like Tempie.
We are sisters.
We are friends.
In my mind’s eye I see us – indentured servants, forced to clean mom’s beauty shop – lighting cigarettes and placing them in ashtrays; reading the latest issues of Cosmo, left there for the grown-up ladies to read while their hair was being made a whiter shade of blue; dancing in our nighties while the The Purple People Eater played on KTNM.
Two very pretty, very smart, very unusual girls.
Who, but us, could tell these stories?
Blessings upon you, dear sister.
I thank you for us.