Easter Thursday And A Birthday.

Today is Easter Thursday, also called Holy Thursday.

Coincidentally, today is also my little sisters birthday.

My sister used to be my best friend, my confidant and my true partner in crime. As children, we behaved the way sisters do. We played a lot and we fought a lot, usually over truly insignificant things, which however seemed so very important to us at the time.

Growing older, a fervent bond developed between us, as a result of our family's emigration to the west. We became best buddies, sharing secrets and confiding in each other with our troubles, relying on and finding strength in one another, when the rest of the world seemed alien and hostile. I recall as if it was yesterday, when upon our return from school each day, we would be sitting in the kitchen or in one of our rooms, having a snack, talking the afternoons away. Funny, I never realized then how precious those few hours would once become and how I would miss them.

But time waits for no one and one day, I left my sister behind when I moved thousands of miles across the ocean, to another continent. After that, our lives took us in different directions and as adults we were never to live in the same country again.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to the wide eyed, cute, sensitive little girl that I so instinctively tried to protect at all times. Whose hand I automatically reached for (and did so until our late teens to her aggravation) as soon as we were crossing a road. The one who used to come to me for help with her homework, who used to look up to me and who used to ask me for advice. She is no longer there. Instead I see an independent, strong, capable woman, loving wife and a devoted mother.

Today is a very significant birthday for her, as it is the last one in a given decade. It is indeed strange to part with that one number, almost a familiar friend, that has been around for 10 years. For a brief - and not so brief - moment, it can evoke feelings of bittersweet melancholy over getting older.

But then we drink some cheap Champagne, shed a tear and smile a smile, while we say good bye to the decade that treated us well. And then finally we conclude the one and only truth; that age is after all only a number.

Therefore my little sister, I promise you, it is a piece of cake. Enjoy your last "you know what" something and believe me when I say;
'The best is yet to come'.
Congratulations!