Happy Birthday Sara

My sister… the flying nun.

Well, most people think of black cats and grinning pumpkins on Halloween. I think of my sister, Sara. Today she turns 26 years old. Happy Birthday Sara! That is so crazy to me. For some reason I still think of her as alot younger than that, even though she is a mom to three (among other things). Anyway, in the spirit of celebration of my little and only sister’s birthday, I thought I would share a few family memories of my darling sister.

Sara loves to leave me messages on my voice mail. Sometimes though, she calls the office. I usualy get messages like, “Josh, some really weird sounding woman called. She sounded like the Cwoffee Tawk lady. But her name was Lucy Carbunkle or something. Anyway, you need to call her.” I get her back though… I am not beyond using my alter-ego, Levon Washington-Lincoln – a fine southern rebel hick – to call her back.

We were all taught that Santa Claus wasn’t real when we were pretty young. Sara, being the outspoken person she was, made sure that anyone who asked knew where she stood on that issue. So this one Christmas, we were in the mall. Sara was maybe 5 or so. This nice elderly lady stopped and chatted with my mom, and then looked at Sara and said sweetly, “so what is Santa bringing you this year?” Sara just looked at her and said, quite empahtically and loudly, “There is no such thing as Santa Claus! My dad said so!” Of course the lady was quite taken aback. Matt and I were so shocked by this behavior of our bold and outspoken sister.

I used to have to watch Matt and Sara after school when mom was at work. Sara was always being her usual pesky self. And I, being the older brother, knew that this type of behavior could not stand. So I decided to keep lists of everything she did bad. Then, when things got really bad, I would call the police. Yup. That’s right, the police. I would say “Sara, I told you 4 times if you did ______ again, I would call the police (or mom, whichever one was worse at the time.) But really I only called time and temperature and pretended to talk to them. Yeah, once she figured that out… well, I still haven;t heard the end of it.

Sarah never liked when people put an “h” at the end of her name. Oops. She was like Anne of Green Gables… Anne with a “e”.

I think Sara has had more car accidents than I have. I know she has totalled at least 2 cars… wrecked many more than that. I remember one time, she was flying down the driveway in our three-wheeler (with barely-no brakes) and ran into the side of mom’s car. They weren’t too happy about that, but then dad had no excuse to be mad because a week or so later, he ran into the same car with the backhoe and it did far more damage.

Sara had a room like nothing I have ever seen. It was amazing, as if her closet just vomited it’s contents all over the floor and all that was left were a few bent hangers. You seriously had to wade through clothing, papers, and “stuff” to get to the other side of the room. Yet, somehow she managed to find matching things to wear.

One time, Sara and I were in the grocery store with my mom. (I was in college, at home for the summer.) We decided to start talking very loudy in absolute gibberish to each other. So were were going back and forth. My mom turned around and said, “Would you two stop! you sound like idiots!” Of course that made us laugh and do it more. Mom quickly tried to escape us.

Sara claims that Matt and I never played with her, but let me assure you that is not true. I remember that we ALWAYS played with her dolls when she bugged us. I know this because I was Cher … or Wonderwoman. I forget which one. Anyway, that’s who I got. I don’t think she had any guy Barbies. Yeah, that is where I learned my incredible fashion sense. On the floor of my sister’s pink bedroom playing Barbies.

One thing I gotta say about Sara is she is not a wuss. She is willing to try anything. From riding her dirtbike at 9 months pregnant to learning to operate big excavators, Sara is the fearless poet. She is amazingly talented and creative. I only hope that someday she will truly know and understand how incredibly gifted and amazing she is! Sara, I truly pray that God will bless you and your children and that you will understand how much He loves you.