random thoughts about a birthday girl

- when mia was just a kid (ie, she used to be a goat), i coerced her to play weird games with me to test just how powerful i was as an older sister. one of my faves was 'robot', where i twisted her arms and legs into awkward positions and she had to hold the pose until i moved them again. naturally, most of the time, i had her looking like a cockroach going towards the light. she never complained. it's amazing why she didn't naturally gravitate towards yoga in adulthood.

- although i never saw it, one of the best (and the term 'best' really depends on whether you are mia or not) events involving mia was when she dove down a flight of stairs at my med school graduation, with two male ushers witnessing the whole gut-wrenching scenario. there's something about slapstick that appeals to me. if the vision of a skinny teenager sliding chest-first down some steps doesn't make you chuckle just a teeny tiny bit, then ... well, um ... i'm sorry.

- mia has really bad dysmenorrhea spells and has, more than once, writhed on my bedroom floor in agony. being the sympathetic sister that i was, i usually laughed at the sight for a few minutes before ordering her to take meds. for one of the last episodes, i gave her an unusually strong pill lying around the house (dad = family drugstore), which cured her in about 4 seconds and provided about an hour of happiness. i think her pain came back after that but i was too busy sleeping to notice.

- i used to call mia 'the human period'. when she was just a little taller than the dining table, her head looked like a bobbing black dot when she walked beside huge pieces of furniture. nowadays, she's more like an inverted exclamation point. which just neatly sums up her personality, actually. how convenient.

- mia forced me to memorize the lyrics to 'ghost' by the indigo girls. and for some reason, i did it. and we sang it together. a lot. because we were divas in a past life. to this day, i'm still not sure what the song is about. apparently, the mississippi's mighty, but it starts in minnesota ... at a place that you could walk across with five steps down. believe it.

- my older sister and i always remind mia that she was the only sister who took ballet and jazz as a child (i took up jazz dance in high school – wait, maybe that's worse). we loved watching her attempts at doing a pas de burre (how DO you spell that?) because we knew we had more fodder for later mocking. our eldest sister was a brutal bully extraordinaire who preyed on every little flaw. i was really glad mia was born because the attacks were finally diverted after 8 very long, very lonely years (thanks, mia).

- mia prepared the best birthday surprises for me. this year she held most of my friends, a few choice acquaintances and some complete strangers at gunpoint (in a gas-filled room) and forced them to send birthday greetings to a special birthday email address. on my birthday, when she was giving me the password for checking the new emails, all i could say was, 'huh?' i react inappropriately when i'm shocked or happy. i was both.

- my younger sister can make the best posters and piñatas and whatever arts-and-crafts things we needed in life. she and my other sister got all the visual arts genes. when mia had to leave and work in chicago, i panicked: WHO IS GOING TO DECORATE THE CHRISTMAS TREE??? all i can do is make a decent table in microsoft word. yey me.

- on our last day together in chicago, where i had to leave her so she could work her arse off in the freezing cold, she woke me up at some ungodly hour with tears in her eyes and said goodbye. i had to shake myself into consciousness and found myself bawling uncontrollably a second later. note to self: it's never a good idea to sob like an idiot first thing in the morning. we hugged and then she left for work. i cried a bit more and felt sorry for myself for losing my strange sister to a strange city. then i passed out again on the couch. sleep trumps despair sometimes.

i heart mia. and i'm sure that despite all the childhood torture and weird memories, she hearts me too.

happy birthday, gross.