October 14, 1976

I was exactly fourteen months old on this day. I have no recollection of it, but it was the first “most important” day in my life apparently.

It was the day she was born.

Her name is…well…let’s call her…Maria. She was born on a Thursday, in a city that is famous for no reason at all. Living in Texas for thirty four years still hasn’t provided me with any insight into why that city became so famous. But…nevertheless…it is. And we shall endure it.

Maria has black hair, as do her parents, brown eyes, like her father, and an angelic face that prompted the nickname “china doll” by a particularly special person.

She was born with the cord around her neck, quite lucky to have lived through the birth, and was brought to a small house of a stay-at-home mother and a hard-working father.

That fourteen month old, Kara is my name, (But when I was younger, I preferred Victoria. Isn’t it a grand and feminine-sounding name?), is red-headed, lively, and already talking. I knew not what to expect when my mother and father came home, but I surely hadn’t planned on a sister.

What is a sister anyway, I wondered?

Well, holy cow, it was a baby doll that actually moved!! So forget those fake ones!

And she cried, too! And if you smiled just right or made the right noises, she might smile and coo back at you. And you could bring your mother a diaper when she needed to be changed and chatter at her to keep her from moving all over the place. Of course, you didn’t know you were inadvertently helping your mother by chattering, you just chattered. Because certainly this little sister wanted to hear everything you had to say.

She would also, of course, want to do everything you would want to and play with every toy you thought worthy of your time.

But it wouldn’t be long before I understood that, while a little sister provided me with better entertainment than any toy I’d encountered thus far, she was someone I would share my life with. Someone I would grow up with. Someone I would love. And, most importantly, someone I would learn from…as long as I had the wisdom to believe it and the courage to admit it.