a graduate

It’s been a busy couple days around here: my baby sister graduated high school on Friday night.

It was a pretty surreal moment for my entire family. She’s our baby. And when I say our, I really do mean OURS. There is a ten year age gap between her and I & nine years between her and my sister, Alissa. It is amazing for us to have the memories we do of her growing up the past 18 years.

I’ll never forget when she was born. My mom let Alissa and I miss school; the day previous we went around telling all of our friends that we were going to get a new baby sister. I was in 4th grade and she was in 3rd grade.

We packed up our backpacks with things to do: homework, [& when I say homework, I mean a map of the United States to color], our walkmans, [yes, we really did have these], & anything else we deemed necessary to have the day our sister arrived.

We were able to sit in the room with my parents for most of the day. Looking back now, I can’t believe my mom allowed this; the poor thing, we probably annoyed the crap out of her. We had to have the T.V. on, we argued, we bounced off the wall with excitement, we were hungry, we rubbed her back when the contractions got close….

Cue the moment my mom said to my dad, “get them out of here.”

& off to the waiting room we went.

The waiting room was small and full of windows. We could see the room my parents were in, but only if we sat tall on our knees on the chairs that lined the room. I remember Alissa and I both noticed a lot of nurses moving in and out of their room quickly. I’ll never forget the moment we saw my dad standing in the window with a bundle of blankets in his arms. We had had our eyes glued on the door, because the commotion had somewhat stopped. We were sitting next to one another, on our knees, just waiting for something to happen.

My dad, grinning ear to ear, had my new sister in his arms, was peering out the window of the door at the two of us. We left all of our things sprawled out across the waiting room floor and RAN to him. [We probably weren’t even supposed to be in there that soon after she was born, but who could wait?! We were just shown a teaser of our sister!]

He opened the door for us, crouched down with Justine Mae swaddled in blankets and a pink hat on her head, and we saw her. Our newest family member. She was beautiful. It was love at first sight.

There are so many stories I could write as an ode to my littlest sister, but I am going to save them for later posts. I wouldn’t do them justice if I just breezed over them quickly right now. I recently went to college orientation with her and my mom and I was left speechless numerous times:

Her chosen major is one of the more difficult ones offered at her college.

The confidence she has in herself makes me extremely jealous.

She knows how to code and use Java. [what the heck is Java…..]

She kicked ass playing basketball against a couple boys during the recreational meet & greet time.

 I could go on…

This little girl is not so little anymore. She is going out into the world knowing exactly who she is and exactly what she wants. I am confident in saying there won’t be one thing that will get in her way.

Off to watch the Cavs pull Game Six out with a win! [hopefully!]

xo