Life is a miracle, and my sister is proof. She has had more than one direct encounter with death, and has not only survived, but thrived, at living her life.
Her life. She won’t allow anyone to dictate how her life looks, for she is her own author.
She is the author of the young woman, barely nineteen, standing at that cold January bus stop waiting for the ever-late RTD, flakes falling, breath puffing whiny wisps of gray carbon dioxide, chemo in her veins, and earning an associate’s degree on top of losing her hair and puking morning to night and losing all the weight she couldn’t afford to live without, and. Living. Breathing. Being.
Yet, she isn’t cancer. She is a woman who has raised two daughters who know how to spin a Rubik’s Cube faster than the record, run thirty seconds or thirty wishes faster than yesterday, know how to skip grades or skip through a divorce in a way that you wouldn’t even know what hit them, and you should see the woman, the mother, the aunt, their mother has become. So far from that bus stop, so far from that shell of herself.
In her fiftieth year on this earth, thirty years past that last chemo treatment, my sister is climbing mountains. That string of hot lightning is behind her, striking just far enough for her to continue down the trail. She is still on the trail, her hair grown back, her daughters behind her, climbing that mountain, stopping to smell the native blooms and criticize the invasive species of plants, wholly herself.
She and I once walked to Machu Picchu. Four days of hiking on carved stone steps, up and down the Andean rainforest, left behind by Peruvian porters who could carry all our tents, sleeping bags, fuel, and food while running past us in old-tire sandals, AND fix our dinner before we made it, because… my sister was studying every last plant, soaking in every last view, and living her life. On the third day of carrying her heavy pack, one of the porters asked her if she needed help. “Yes,” she breathlessly exclaimed in her flawless Spanish, “and I will pay you anything you’re asking to carry my bag.” And what did he do but take her cash and strap that bag to five others on the top of his back so that she could spend more of her hours identifying the endemic plant species of the Inca Trail?
That is my sister, climbing her mountains. It might not be your typical peak-hungry viewpoint, but from her viewpoint, you will see something smaller that makes the world so much bigger. You will see the endemic butterflies, the droplets of humidity, the life-giving leaves that live amongst the pollution… the hope.
My sister, my constant childhood companion, the only one who knows what I know in the same and unequal way that I know it. She is marking half a miraculous century on this earth, and we are so lucky to have her on this earth.
Life is a miracle, and my sister is proof. I hope she can prove it for another fifty years, or however long it takes for her to live her life the way she chooses. Stopping to smell the flowers, breathing life into her motherhood, being herself. Never mind a few stone steps, a bout of chemo, a rockfall, or a lightning strike along the way. My sister knows how to live her life.
Her life. Happy birthday to my beautiful, strong, survivalist sister.
