"The Best Things in Life Aren't Things"

Earlier today, on Liz's blog, she wrote about her best birthday present ever. I tried to think what mine was, but nothing came. I was trying to envision something wrapped in fancy paper, tied up with a beautiful bow. But my best birthday present ever didn't come in a package. It came on an airplane in May of 2004. All the way from Ireland. And stayed for a month. It was a visit from my sister

I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't have a sister, because my sister is also my best friend. It wasn't always so. When I was twelve and she was six, I thought she was the biggest pest in the world. I made the mistake of thinking that age made me superior. Had I known then how cool she'd be as a grownup I'd have begged her to tag along with me, instead of hatching elaborate plots to give her the slip. I probably traumatised her for life with my heartless cruelty, but, wonder of wonders, she doesn't hold a grudge.

We've been there for each other through good times and bad. She's always available at the other end of a transatlantic phoneline to talk me through my latest meltdown. She makes me laugh; she makes me cry; she makes me glad to be alive, even when I'm at odds with the rest of the world.

So when she called to tell me she was arriving two days after my birthday, I was ecstatic! No warmup was needed. We met, we hugged and we started talking. My, how we talked! We'd start at breakfast and we'd still be yakking at dessert, over our last cup of tea, sitting out on the porch in the balmy Florida darkness . The OC just shook his head, speechless, no doubt, with admiration for our stamina.

She wasn't much interested in playing tourist. We did take some long walks on the beach. She shopped like a crazy woman, and badgered me into making and finishing a quilt for T, my first grandson. Without her cracking the whip, it might still be among my unfinished symphonies.

Too soon the month was over. On our way to the airport we decided that this was something we needed to do much more often than once every seven years. In 2005 I went and spent a month with her in Ireland. Last summer she cycled across the north of Spain for a month with her husband and their two sons. I'm thinking they can let me have her again next summer........I wouldn't mind at all getting the exact same birthday present as the one I got in 2004.