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2002-11-04 - 11:21 p.m.

November the fourth. Every time I wrote that date today I remembered. It is one of the first dates I knew: my sister's birthday. If she had lived, she would have been forty-six today, but the day passes quietly and without celebration. She remains in my memories as she was ten years ago, and sometimes, especially on her birthday I try to imagine what she might be like now.... maybe a few grey hairs or a few more pounds. She used to tease me about getting old and I always expected that I would return the favor. Because our birthdays were only four days apart, they were always linked in some way, and I can't think about my childhood birthdays without thinking of hers, too.

I remember when she was born and they brought her home from the hospital on my fifth birthday. Everyone kept making a fuss about how I got at baby sister for my birthday. But I wasn't very impressed with the new baby and not at all pleased with the outpouring of attention she received. My "real" gift was a doll house and furniture. In a year or so when my baby sister learned to walk, I was always distressed to come home from school and find that she had caused an "earthquake" in the doll house.

That's kind of the way it was between us for the first ten years of her life: she invaded and shook up my life. She was always nipping at my heels: younger, cuter, more charming. While I had the obvious advantages of age: size, education and cunning. We competed and fought, but we also loved each other. The only time I ever got into a fight at school I was defending her from a bully. And then when I was in my teens and she was a precocious pre-teen, we suddenly changed from being competitors to being friends and allies.

We never had elaborate birthday parties: we had separate-but-equal homemade and decorated cakes with candles, and got to have a friend over to spend the night. We usually got whatever we were most yearning for from the parents, and one of our grandmothers would send us each a dollar every year. But a birthday is a big thrill when you are young and so eager for that next step, that next big year older/ cooler/ more impressive. Time never dragged so slowly as it did in the days between our birthdays. I used to think that November 5, 6 and 7 were the longest days of the year, because the birthday door had been opened and I had peeked through it, and there was no closing it again. All I could think about was my magical day.

For years, after we grew up, my sister and I always celebrated our birthdays together in one big family party. The first November after she died, we gathered on my birthday, but it was sad and strange for everyone including me. So after that we just didn't celebrate my birthday at all for several years. I suppose it was just because no one wanted to pretend that things were the same when they weren't. A few years ago we started getting together again, not from any specific decision, but just from a gradual healing, or maybe just remembering how much we still needed each other as a family.

So I am the only birthday girl now, and I thought I would never get used to it, but I have. New traditions have gradually replaced the old. I was thinking about that today as November the fourth rushed by in the momentum of my work day. I no longer think the days before my birthday drag endlessly. In fact it seems almost impossible that it is already time for my birthday again. Some part of me could probably wail and beat my breast about getting old, but I have promised myself that I owed it to her to age gracefully. That is to say, with grace. That I will be grateful for the opportunity to live through all the stages of a long life, to respect the privilege of growing old-- a privilege she didn't get to have. Perhaps it the only gift I can still give her.

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