Saturday, December 13, 2008

Happy Birthday, Sharon

My sister was born on the 13th, which unfortunately subjected her to a lot of comments from parents and relatives when that date happened to fall on a Friday. We all know how Friday the 13th is supposed to be so unlucky. She was also born in December, which meant that the proximity of her birthday to Christmas meant people often didn't shop especially for her birthday. My mother would usually pull out an extra Christmas gift and give it to her early.

On the bright side, when your birthday is this close to the biggest holiday of the year, you can look forward to it because you'll get a week off from school in the near future. For me, my birthday was 3-5 days before school started so I never felt entirely great about its arrival.

My sister is 46 this year and I'm sure she wouldn't like me to remind her of it, but I'm glad she's been around for all of my life. The truth is that she has provided better stability and a closer familial bond than my parents ever did. These days we talk about 5 days a week, sometimes more, and I'm immensely grateful for the technology that allows us to have such a bond when we live on nearly opposite sides of the planet. I'm also immensely grateful that she's my sister and hope this is a special day for her because she deserves it. Happy birthday, Sharon, and all of my love to you.

2 comments:

Sharon said...

Thanks for the birthday wishes, and I am glad you are my sister.

All my love.

Sherry said...

Mine is December 16th. I so hated the awful birthday-Christmas gift combo. My parents refused to put a tree up until after my birthday to try to keep it separate, but no one else did. And about having time off from school - not so great. Everyone had taken off on trips so no one was around to come to the parties. Oh, woe is me! LOL!

Because of this I was determined to have my children in the summer as far from Christmas as possible. Did well on it - one in June one in July.

Happy Birthday to your sister.