friends to the end

once upon a time, there was a nice boy.  and he had a stellar sister.

as the flow of life has moved onward, my sister and i lamentably aren't as close as we once were.  getting married and having kids kind of does that, but that's how life is supposed to go, and that's ok.  last year for a birthday/moving away present she gave me a book called "friends to the end."  it has a picture of a pair of elephants on the cover, which makes it appropriate enough right there.  in the flurry of moving last week, i picked up off of my living room end table and flipped through it during my first night in my new house.

inside the cover she had written that so many of the sayings in there reminded her of me, noting especially several specific pages.  what was kind of cool about that was that she continued to add numbers: "& 37 & 38 & 42 & 57", as she was still finding more things that stood out to her.

because it's my blog and i can do what i want to here, i'm going to share some of those pages.  you can get a glimpse into the relationship that me and my dear sister have built.

• there were so many times when we both needed a shoulder to cry on.
• there is a curious fact about friendship that we have always known but rarely acknowledge: by understanding others, we also come closer to understanding ourselves.
• we can always count on our pals to watch our back and look out for our best interests.
• a friend is there to keep our chin up, no matter what it takes.
• a friend knows when we need a hug.
• friends know when to offer serious counsel and thoughtful, heartfelt advice.
• and they know when to say, "hey, why the long face? snap out of it!" (of all my friends, my sister knows best when to do this)
• most important, friends know when to just sit quietly beside us and say nothing at all.
• and basically get ourselves into bizarre but enjoyable situations that probably don't make a lot of sense to anybody else. (yes, definitely me and my sister)
• you could search the whole world looking for a friendship like ours, and you would only wear our a good pair of feet.

well good.
hooray for sisters.