Forty Things
Today is my sister’s fortieth birthday. While I could and perhaps ought to write a more heartfelt post about why I love my sister, instead I have put together the below list of forty things that I love about her and our relationship. Please enjoy, and if you know and love my sister too, please tell her Happy Birthday!
40 things I love about my Seester
She let’s me call her Seester, even though she has a real name which is Meredith. She’s even in my phone as “Seester”.
Meredith is much better at adulthood than the average human. Seriously, you might think you have it together, but then you’ll meet her and be like, “wow, I need to work on myself”. But she’ll never make you feel bad about that and will in fact offer ideas to help you get organized.
She always has an idea for everything. Be it a craft project, a creative block, or deep emotional turmoil, she’s got suggestions.
While she always has suggestions, she doesn’t force unsolicited advice on you (a skill I’m trying to learn from her).
When it comes to decorating a home i.e. paint colors or hanging pictures/artwork, she always knows what will look best.
She can fix whatever hole or broken zipper I manage to inflict on any piece of clothing.
She has two really cute dogs and she is the best pet parent.
Speaking of pets, she fully understands my deep emotional connection to my cat and never judges me for it.
She is the best at picking out toys for my cat. I’ve bought him lots of toys, but it never fails that his favorites are the ones his Auntie Meredith buys for him.
She taught me how to French braid, practicing on our American Girl dolls.
She will always braid my hair if I ask her to (although she never lets me touch her hair which I guess is fine but I’m just saying I’m willing to return the favor).
If she’s not braiding my hair, sometimes I can get her to just scratch my head for me which is awesome.
She is not scared of tornadoes which is good because she lives in the Midwest, but also freaks me out because she wants to go outside and watch the storms when she should be in the basement. I don’t love that she does this, but I do love that she’s brave.
She taught me how to knit, which is one of my favorite hobbies.
She taught me how to crochet, which is another of my favorite hobbies.
She is really good at sewing and envisioning ways to finish a craft project. For example, I cross stitched the Hogwarts crest and wanted to turn it into a pillow, but had no idea how to do that. I handed it to her and within thirty minutes I had a finished pillow. She’s magical.
She’s fun to go on road trips with. We always sing through numerous Broadway soundtracks together.
She is a tv show binge watcher and is always down to watch an episode or seven of whatever show we’re currently on.
She is a good cook and humors me when I check expiration dates and insist on checking the temperature of whatever meat she is cooking.
From the day I was born she has always taken care of me. I mean, so did our parents, but Meredith helped. In particular I remember her walking me to my kindergarten classroom after I had injured my foot. She made sure I got to class okay and had what I needed. She was seven at the time.
In the summer of 2022 when we were all staying at my dad’s new house following his retirement, I came down with COVID. As much as I could I stayed in my bedroom so I didn’t infect the rest of the family, but I could not keep her away from me. She checked on me multiple times a day, brought me food, bought me medicine. At one point she even laid down on the bed next to me and I was like, “Dude, you’re going to get sick, get out of here!” but she didn’t care, she was taking care of me. P.S. she somehow did not catch COVID from either me or her husband, who came down with it a week after I did.
She is a public school English teacher, so she always has good stories about how obnoxious and stupid the administration/parents/students can be. It is amusing.
She is a public school English teacher, so she always has heartwarming stories about something one of her students did or said which gives one hope for the youth of America.
She is a public school English teacher and she works harder than pretty much anyone I’ve ever met.
She is very thoughtful. Our grandmother loved angels. When Grams died, Meredith went out and got little angel ornaments for each of us grandchildren.
She is almost always late. I don’t love that, but I love that it is predictable and that she doesn’t care when we tease her about her casual relationship with time.
She is perfectly open to being extremely silly. If I speak to her in an outrageous accent, she will join right in.
When we were kids we used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation with our dad. We would pull our headbands down over our eyes and pretend to be Geordi (Levar Burton’s character) because we loved Levar Burton and also because we were awesome.
If I have the tune of a hymn stuck in my head but cannot remember which hymn it is, if I call her and hum it to her she can tell me which hymn it is. She usually knows the page number in the hymnal too.
We grew up watching the same movies over and over again together, so she gets all of the references I make to obscure things that nobody else picks up on.
She knows that I like to extend my own birthday celebrations as long as possible, so she will send me multiple birthday cards and little gifts throughout the whole month of my birthday. The last gift of my birthday is always from her and usually arrives about four weeks after the actual day. I love it.
She is a little over two years older than me, so she remembers more stuff from when I was really little than I do. She always corrects me when I reminisce about something and have remembered it wrong, which I appreciate.
Whenever I started a new school, I always had Meredith as a resource for when I had questions about where things were or how the lunchroom worked. She had to figure it all out on her own, but I could always bother her with a billion questions. She has yet to murder me for doing so.
I love annoying my sister. It’s actually pretty hard to do these days because she’s basically immune to me, but it’s still fun to try.
When I need a reality check, she promptly serves one up. Most of the time if I call her because I’m upset about something, she’s very chill and listens and sympathizes. But there have been a few times when I’ve been really upset over something extremely stupid or have just been blind to the real situation. Those are the times when she’s like, “Listen, here’s the deal…” and then she tells me what the deal is. It is extremely helpful to be snapped back into reality by someone who I know is in my corner.
When we were kids we used to fight viciously over card games, specifically over games of Spit. I still won’t play Spit, but basically any other game is very fun to play with her.
She is introverted like I am, so we can spend a whole day together not really talking and it’s not awkward. We don’t feel like we have to entertain each other.
Meredith is the only other person I know who re-reads/listens to the Harry Potter audiobooks as much as I do. Therefore she is the best person to talk to about really deep cut theories and possible errors that the author made over the course of seven books.
When we went on a road trip which included driving across South Dakota, I got super freaked out when I tried to drive because the wind was coming straight at us as we headed west. It felt to me like I was going to lose control of the car. I drove maybe thirty minutes before I made Meredith take over even though she had been driving all morning and had been planning to sleep. She drove all the way to the Black Hills. She also drove most of the way home through some pretty rough thunderstorms. And she never made me feel bad about it because she is the best.
She made it really easy to follow her in school. She was a good student and well behaved so when I would have the same teacher as her, they were happy when they confirmed that I was Meredith’s sister. She boosted my reputation without me having to do a thing except not mess it up.
In the movie Lincoln, at one point President Lincoln is explaining something to another character who catches on very quickly and lets the president know that he understands. President Lincoln nods and kind of smiles and says, “What a joy to be comprehended.” That is how I feel around my sister. Even in areas where we differ, we still can understand where the other one is coming from. Perhaps its our shared DNA or simply the fact that we grew up together and respect each other as people. But no one understands me quite the same way that my sister does, and for that I am forever grateful.
Happy Birthday Seester!!! Can’t wait to be in our nineties and living together in a home full of dogs and cats just knitting and binge watching shows until we die.
