Today I’d like to gush about my sister, known hereabouts as sister sledge. In honor of this great gushiness, I have made today Unofficial National Sister Day.

My sister is, was, and always shall be, an individual. In her earliest photos, you can already see a pert, elfin face with a stubborn little chin. This is the child who, when told she was contrary, spat back, “I am NOT!” This is the girl who cut her hair not out of deviltry or curiosity, but because it was getting in her eyes during class (she asked to be excused to the bathroom and took her safety scissors.) She cut her bangs, straight across, to approximately one half inch. When we had to invent our own characters for the class-ending play at Ladybug Theatre drama camp, amid a sea of queens, fairy queens, and princesses, she wanted to be a French waiter (I wanted to be a bunny who could fly.) This was the teenager who told her impatient family, waiting for her to get out of the car on a family trip, that she was “savoring the inertia.”

We have been together for 24 years next Friday. We were pals from the start, maybe from the first time she sat carefully on the couch to hold the chubby, fussy, black-haired little me. Our relationship has weathered my peeing on her floor, at two years old; my ripping Darth Vader’s cloak, at seven; my throwing a phone book at her, at eleven; her insisting on watching the Blazer game during an all-new Star Trek: the Next Generation episode at age 12 or so; her banishing me from her room entirely and ineffectually several times when she was 13 through 16; and any number of the normal tiffs and spats. We were bickering pots of anger throughout her early teenagerhood, and then we made a startling discovery. We went on a family vacation to England, and made a solemn pact to get along “for Dad’s sake.” It wasn’t hard, and it was far, far more fun than fighting. We have been the best of friends ever since.

Obviously, I have been through a rough patch lately. My entire life fell apart, and with it much of my sense of my self, value, and place in the world—as well as my job and putative self-sufficiency. My sister has been not only the most understanding and supportive listener I could ask for, not only the most generous helper and organizer I could dream of, but an inspiration to me. She has been through similar thorn-thickets on the trail of life, and has emerged stronger, more determined, more self-aware and confident, more aware of and committed to her inner light. It’s ironic, because she has the audacity to call me a ‘role model,’ because I turn out nonsensical fiction for my website and so forth… but she is far more deserving of the phrase. She never stops searching for insight, reaching for self-betterment and exploring the world’s possibilities. I love you, sisser. You’ve walked beside me all through life, even when our paths were far apart, and I could not ask for a better fellow traveler.