Sorella Turns 40 ...

40 years ago today, I was walking hand in hand with my grandparents and they announced that they received a telegram from my dad saying that I had a sister. I remember asking them how that was going to work. Will she live with us? And if yes, where? Younger kids reading, I hope google can explain the telegram concept to you.

40 years later from that hot August day, I cannot imagine my life without her.

I have struggled for days with what I was going to say about her on her big day, because no words can describe who she is and how I truly feel about our bond. How lost I would be in the world, without her.

We used to fight as kids and I used to tell her I hated her. Mom, patient as she always is and an only child herself, used to say “there will be a day when you're both going to thank me for giving you a sister.” Truer words have never been spoken!

We have been together, side by side, at least conceptually if not physically every second of every day for these past 40 years. I have watched her grow from this small, scrawny child to the beautiful, confident, plucky woman she is today. She's had a hard life putting up with me and trying to prove her own self when all the world wanted to do is see her just another version of me. And that, she never has been.

She has always been her own person, with a big, if not loud, voice, sometimes muted and shy, sometimes going against all the streams she ever swam in, sometimes sneaking around in anonymity to get where she wanted to go, but always with a clear plan in her head of where she should end up. Through it all, she has been an original. As much as I was a late bloomer, she was always way ahead of her years. A beautiful soul, lover of freedom and fairness, a lawyer by trade, and an artist by choice. To this day, she remains wide-eyed, highly educated and incredibly curious. She is a unique mix of clinical fear and adventurer, a wild kid and a prissy girl who loves pretty dresses and shivers at the sight of spiders but doesn't blink twice about going for a run before sunrise in the middle of the woods.

40 years later we still learn, every time we talk with each other, something from one another. I from her, as much as she from me. Only the respect has gone deeper over the years. The love has always been there, sown into our blood streams by mom.

The only people luckier than I am to have her in their lives are her two boys. She is their role model, their guide, their North Star. As parents and kids go, they don't always see eye-to-eye, but their bond is deep and transcends the everyday.

I cherish and worship every minute I get so spend with her alone, because that's when we both can be our truest selves, when we can leave the worries of today aside and we can rediscover our childhood selves, the most pure selves we've known. The past almost week we spent in New York allowed us to do just that and I will always remember, even in senility, this trip and the full circle that it closed and celebrated.

What I wish for her now is boundary-less dreams ahead, a world of miracles and possibilities fuller and richer than the first 40 years. She used to pick on me when I turned 40 that I was old. She gets a taste of “old” for herself now, too, and all I can promise her is: old doesn't taste that bad and she is here to make it look sexy.

Happy birthday, Sorella! I love you to The Sun (your ruling planet) and back and as always, know that your name is forever engraved into a big physical part of my heart.

Thank you for existing, and I thank mom and dad for the most priceless gift they ever gave us.

She introduced me to The Doors, as she was a hippy before I was. I think Jim Morrison had a vision of her when he wrote this:

Wild child full of grace
Savior of the human race
Your cool faceNatural child, terrible child
Not your mother's or your father's child
Your our child, screaming wild
An ancient lunatic reins
In the trees of the night
(...)With hunger at her heels
Freedom in her eyes
She dances on her knees
Pirate prince at her side
Staring into the hollow idol’s eye

Wild child full of grace
Savior of the human race
Your cool face (Jim Morrison, The Doors - 1969)