IOU: Kristin

I've been thinking about Kristin because it was her birthday this week, and she is actually within an arm's length of reaching the big three-oh, as opposed to three years ago when she turned twenty-five and liked to tell everyone she was almost thirty.

I was thinking about how she is warm and funny and has great hair and eyes the color of summer. About how she loves to read and has calf muscles to die for and sometimes snorts when she laughs too hard. How all of this adds up to someone so easy to adore.

I was thinking how just last month, to better the life of a little boy with leukemia, she ran a marathon, which I feel the need to point out is twenty six point two miles all in a row. Dang.

And then I was thinking about how lucky I am to be little old pathological me who grew up without sisters but married into this family; who blinked one day as it sank in that these girls have filled in the spaces, the parts of me I hadn't thought to realize were missing.