The friend of the people

Today I have decided to talk about my sister Susie. I want to talk about her because she is coming to visit soon and I am feeling sentimental as only a visit from Susie will make me feel. Susie is one of the most good natured, kind, loving, generous, accepting, and totally sincere people that I have ever known. She is just easy to be around. She makes people feel instantly comfortable. She laughs easily and doesn’t often make too many jokes but when she does they always catch us off guard and crack everyone up. There is nothing pretentious or judgmental about her. My parents got lucky with Susie because she has always had such a clam spirit and after raising me they deserved a break. She brings a wonderful balance to our family. She has a heart of gold in the most uncheesy, not-a-cliché sort of way.

When we were kids I would ask Susie to bring me stuff from my room in the basement and as an incentive I would promise her all the change on my dresser. She would run my errands for me-go grab my hair tie or the cordless phone only to discover that I didn’t have any change on my dresser or if I did it was only a few cents. It is something I still feel a little guilty about. I tell myself that one of these days I am going to save all my change for a year and hand Susie the box of change I owe her.

Susie and her husband live pretty far away from us now. They bough their first house a couple of years ago and came back home to pick up their things and brought a video of them walking through their house. We spent the weekend watching the video and discussing all the changes they wanted to make, how they were going to fix the place up and make it their own. One morning, just before they were going to head back, they got a call that their house had burnt down. Both Susie and her husband were incredible during the experience. I never heard them complain. They were sad but always positive and diligent about making the situation okay. And in the end they rebuilt a beautiful home.

As I am writing this I am remembering tons of stories I could tell about Susie. She has carried me through a computer programming class, let me borrow her cell phone and run up her minutes when I had a crisis at home while on a vacation, always let me be the travel agent when we would play pretend travel agency. For years we would spend our afternoons together while I babysat my cousin Sean and we would walk from the bus stop to my Aunts house and I would talk and talk and talk the whole time and Susie would listen. She has always listened without judgement and supported me unconditionally. And there is so much more.

I have so much admiration and love for my sister Susie. I certainly cannot touch on all of the beautiful, special and uniquely lovely bits and pieces of the person that she is in a blog post. But I do think that I will write them out and send her a letter. We should celebrate the people in our lives and make sure they know what they mean to us.