I’d like to tell you about my baby sister. It was her birthday last Friday, but for some reasons (namely, busy Labour Day weekend and then going back to work, ack) this birthday post is very, very late.
Mini-Di shared a room with Mini-Beth (3 years her/my junior) for about 8 years. I have lots of memories of filling our room with My Little Pony villages, drawing and colouring at our wall-length desk, making forts with our corner bunk beds, “talking” to each other using our own made-up sign language, and listening to our audio tapes of The Rescuers and Sleeping Beauty while grooming our stuffed animals.
I also have plenty of memories of bickering, coming to standoffs while cleaning our room, vowing NEVER TO SPEAK TO HER AGAIN, EVER until 37 minutes later when I had to succumb because you really can’t go that long without talking to someone you live with who also if you’re honest is actually one of your very best friends.
It’s been a long time since we’ve lived together (and there’s very little bickering these days). My annoying, precocious, fun little sister has grown into an extraordinary, brilliant (and still fun) woman, and is still one of my best friends.
She is the kind of person who makes and brings people soup when they’re sick – and it’s the best damn soup you’ve ever tasted. She is principled, passionate, disciplined, smart, creative, with an unparalleled ability to work hard. Her laugh is contagious. She has a penchant for jokes that are dumb, but funny. She is well-known for falling asleep during movies, even really exciting ones. Also for being gorgeous. She’s one of those girls that basically all the guys she knows (and undoubtedly some girls too) have been in love with at one time or another. Even at that age where you’re supposed to awkward and pimply, she was a knockout. {Sigh.}
She is also brimming with love, herself. Lucky are those of us who receive it. For those she loves, she has been known to:
- write amazing rhyming poems full of exuberant imagery, silliness, and profundity,
- make checkered birthday cake from scratch,
- hand-cut impossibly cool paper doll chains,
- give excellent massages and/or pedicures,
- cook and bring delicious picnics,
- create personalized works of art, and/or
- make desserts that can be legitimately lit on fire.
Those are just a few of the things. She’s one seriously creative chica, to the point that she solves problems with sheer artistic innovation. For example, one day I’d brought a two-year-old E to her house for the day, and for some unknown reason we had NOT BROUGHT ANY CARS for my car-obsessed son to play with. How many people do you know who could have whipped up something as wicked-awesome (or SICK, as the kids would say) as this?? Auntie Beth can do it.
And then there was that time – wait, it was just last week! – when we were having a fiesta for the birthday in question, so of course Beth and her main man (sometimes referred to as Uncle D) created a piñata that looked like THIS:
So, you see what I mean. This gal is SOMETHING ELSE – that is to say, something else AWESOME.
Dear Berty, I’m sorry this “birthday” post is almost a week late. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you ferociously; I do. And I know my kids love you too. You’re amazing. I hope this year is full of fulfilled potential and stimulating challenges and uncontrollable laughter and dreams coming true… and lots of visits with us. xoxox
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[subscribe2]
COL!!
Nice daughter, lady.
oh, oh, i love her, too!!!!!!
and i also think she is AWESOME.
and what fun to see the picture of the two of you, Berty wearing the little dress i made – she was the third of four known wearers of that little model…
(you, on the other hand, Di, rather under-advertise yourself. just bucuz you’re not wearing a dress?
anyhow,
HAPPY BERTY!
You made that dress?? Lovely. Can you make me a big one for now?
Happy Bert Day! Yayyyy!
I have some more pictures of the lobster (lying in wait on the coffee table), if you want them. Also, I have pictures of the water park. And us at the water park. By which I mean Di and Bet and Dyl looking like they are having a good time. Which they do look like, but since they are also wearing large amounts of exposed flesh I thought I’d check with the parties concerned before posting online, and all that.
Also, Mini-Bet had the poochy eyes and the cute crooked smile and a whole bunch of notes in the kitchen drawer that had the documentation of the things she said which were cute. And then she whipped up her skirt and spattered away.
Yes, Beth’s waterpark birthdays are the BOMB. (The good bomb.) And yes… all her kid pics are seriously yummy, even though I know for a FACT that I sometimes wanted to throttle her. (Lovingly.)
Oh, Di. You honour and flatter me. Thank you.
You’re welcome. But I just tell it like I see it.
As for mini-Di’s fashion sense at age – what? 8 or so? – it was actually quite good. In fact, I think she took more interest in what she wore and how put-together it was, as a child, than either of her sisters. The peculiar thing was, however, that the clothes in combination with her body and activity level did not cooperate very nicely with her fashion sense. She would pick out a skirt and blouse that went beautifully together and that I might not have thought of myself, and we’d get her all dressed, and before she was out the door the blouse was coming untucked and the skirt was twisted 1/4 way around… The life of a childhood does not always support the ambitions of a child. On the other hand, for some reason, whenever I made mini-Di a garment, either sewn or crocheted (and I’m talking designed and invented, not from a pattern), it seemed to work out better than my efforts for anyone else, including myself!
And as for cute – you were ALL awesomely cute! No possible way to rank cuteness in this crowd.