Today is my sister Krisanda's birthday. She's turning 21 again. All four of Bob and Cathie's children started turning 21 every year sometime around 2010. It's been great to be the same age finally.
Krisanda is my middle sister. She is also the sister who has most consistently lied to me throughout my life. For example, for over a decade she had convinced me that we once had an older sister named Christine who was killed in a car accident on the way home from a beauty pageant and had since haunted the basement singing Whitney Houston songs.
I thought I was 1/4 Mexican until I was 14.
Once she made me perform a series of very uncomfortable poison control remedies because she thought a drop of cleaning solution had landed in my mouth. Although, to be fair, I don't think she was playing a joke on me on that one. I think she legitimately thought I was going to die.
I've always had a very special and unique bond with each of my sisters. And Krisanda is definitely a kindred spirit to me. We both got the severe worrying gene that our other siblings seemed to avoid and I think this has pushed us together throughout our lives.
Krisanda is four years older than me and I remember so well all of the times when 10-year-old version of her read books to 6-year-old version of me. And all of the times as teenagers we would go on bike-rides together. Or the miserable two years of our lives when we mistakenly thought it would be fun to work at a restaurant together. (The together part was nice, but the restaurant part was misery).
Throughout adulthood I haven't had the chance to spend nearly as much time with Krisanda as I would have liked to. She's a busy mom with four wild animals as children. And she's a great mom at that. Sometimes I see her little family and can't help but feel that although she is only four years older than me, she has advanced in life experience about four decades beyond anything I've ever known. And it makes me jealous. And proud of her.
Also, I'm still kind of upset about the Mexican thing.
Happy birthday, sister.
~It Just Gets Stranger
Happy birthday, Krisandra! Thank you for torturing Eli so he'd grow up and entertain us at others' expense! :)
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written.
ReplyDeleteI love posts about your family. Can you guys have a reality tv show please?
ReplyDeleteSuch a sweet post! I hope your sister has a great birthday!
ReplyDeleteMy brother told me that the houses near a local cemetery had dead people living in them and I believed him until I was, like, thirteen. I still drive by there sometimes and look suspiciously at the houses.
ReplyDeleteIs Krisanda the sister that gave us The First Eye? If so, I think that shall be her greatest legacy. Happy birthday, Krisanda!
ReplyDeleteYes! This is The First Eye sister.
DeleteProud to call you "Son". Thanks for making her day!
ReplyDeleteCathie XoXoXOXoxoXoXooo
So thankful such wonderful kids that are close to each other and can joke around. Love you all. Happy Birthday, Krisanda.
Love, Dad
I often say my mother made me rich when she gave me 3 sisters - only 2 of us live close, but we still talk every week. The pill did us a great disservice.
ReplyDeleteI'm the youngest. The sibling closest in age to me was my brother who was seven years older. You'd think that would be a big enough age difference to keep us from being close, but that's not so. When I was little and upset that all my friends had baby brothers and sisters and I didn't, he started pretending to be my baby brother. This game went on for an embarrassingly long number of years. My brother had a wild imagination, and could make mundane activities super fun. On one long roadtrip, he used our time in the back of the suburban to tell me all about how before I was born, our family lived in the South American jungle. They had adventures eerily similar to those of the Swiss Family Robinson. Each tale of jungle life would end with, "But then we found out you were going to be born, and Mom and Dad said we had to move back to America." I was convinced that these were true stories from family history until sometime around the age of ten.
ReplyDeleteI have two older sisters and the older one convinced the other that she was black and my parents painted her white at night. She believed it until she was 13!!
ReplyDeleteMy younger brother has a slew of stories about what an evil older sister I was.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he'll finally shut up about it, since I'm taking him to Disneyland, Legoland, and Universal Studios for his final college spring break.
Can i ask how your parents came up with your siblings' names? (no matter how i re-word it, that sentence sounds judgy; it isn't meant to be. I've just always wondered)
ReplyDeleteI blame drugs.
DeleteBut their explanation is this:
Krishelle: Something about having heard the name before.
Krisanda: Something about making it up.
Eli: Something about the Bible.
Micalyne: They hated their last child.
I have a somewhat unusual first name, which also happens to start with a 'K'. I tell people "it was the 60s, there were a lot of drugs going around."
DeleteMy mother is simply thrilled with this comment, as you can imagine.
I'm glad "guest" asked... I wanted to know, too. And since Krishelle and Krisanda both start with Kris, I figure they must be twins... are they? If they aren't "real twins" perhaps they are evil twins :-)?
DeleteAnd can we get a pronunciation guide? I'd hate to think I'm saying their names wrong... in my head that is. I think Krishelle sounds like Michelle, but Krisanda... is it Kris-ah-da or Kris-and-a?
I think I've got Eli figured out though... how to pronounce his name, that is.
They are not twins. Bob and Cathie just started running out of ideas really quickly.
DeleteKrishelle: Like "Michelle"
Krisanda: Kris-an-da
Eli: Paul Sigh-mon
Micalyne: Mike-a-lynn
Just curious, what happened to Kurt? You haven't mentioned him in awhile.
ReplyDelete