Hey Little Sister

In case anyone was worried (and since no one has called to check on me, I'm guessing that, in fact, no one was worried, but just in case) - no, I haven't been skipping the writing because that last Boot Camp post has had me laid up for nearly a month. I've been skipping the writing because I'm plain lazy. Sigh, so much for a nudge to write every day.

This morning though - I woke to a fantastic nudge, from an unlikely source.

When I lived in San Francisco (alllllllll those many years ago) I had the privilege and the pleasure of being a Big Sister through Big Brothers Big Sisters to an amazing young lady, Daniela. Since we're back in touch through the miracle of The Facebook, I'll do my best not to embarrass her here. For better or worse, my move away from San Francisco to New York made it possible to skip the years where I surely would have been embarrassing Daniela at every turn. We met just days after her 10th birthday, I left (sigh) when she was 13, and this February she turned 18 (what the???). I can only keep the years right because she was born the year I graduated from high school --- that math'll make your bones ache for sure. Does mine.

At our last Giants' game together - 2003

The nudge to write this morning came from Daniela, in a Facebook post -- "I SOOO miss your mom's jelly!". As you might imagine, this post then could have two paths today and I'm struggling to keep them straight. For now, I want to focus on my memories of Daniela. She changed my life in the kind of way that is so, so hard to put into words and I've never quite gotten it right (write?). Will try to do so in a way that makes her blush, but not from embarrassment, but rather from the recognition of herself in what I'm about to say.

Daniela was that kid that you know that is always helping someone. If she wasn't helping her kid sister get to school, then she was helping out around the Boys & Girls Clubs (BGCSF - where we met and spent much of our time) in whatever way she could. Usually in ways that most people didn't even notice. She was casual and stealth with her help, not show-y or bragging. She didn't cut up extra watermelon or dust off a little kid who fell to get any praise, it just came quite naturally to her. Never occurred to her, I'd bet, not to help whenever possible.

She was also funny. Wicked funny. And competitive. Fiercely competitive. I suffered many a loss at those BGCSF pool tables. My record still hasn't recovered. More than anything though, Daniela was open - wide open and honest. I realize some of that was her age - again, I missed out on the true teenage years so can't speak to how our day-to-day relationship may have melded into something new. But the years we did spend together she was an open book. I knew her brothers and sisters, all of her friends, I went to her house and her school, her mom made (unbelievable!) tacos and empenadas for me, her dad stopped by the Clubs every now and then... She let me into her world in ways that certainly made me love and delight in her more and more with each new vantage point she unwittingly offered up.

I'm failing again to really capture our relationship and to truly explain what Daniela meant to me at the time. I get sidetracked by the stories, the incidents, the stand-out moments in the story telling and it all blurs the core. Daniela made me, by her very existence, responsible for someone besides myself. She forced me to realize that I'm not the most important person in the whole wide world at all which, clearly, is a realization beyond words. She allowed me to shake of a shitty day at work and to focus on an art project or a gingerbread house or a 7th inning stretch instead. She showed me, every week, what it looks like to struggle through life with aplomb - and to always laugh, and crack jokes, and keep one eye trained on your kid sister while you're at it. She was amazing. She was strong. She was smart. She held her family and friends together in many ways, always the center, always the glue. And she did all this at 11, 12, 13 years old...

Damn I'm sad that I missed those next 6 years. I'm also thrilled to be back in touch, if sporadically. And I look very much forward to the day when we can sit across dinner table together again, and just talk. Talk about what all has happened since she last rode in the Jetta, first adjusting the radio, and then relaxing into a friendship that was shaping the both of us forever... whether either of us knew it or not.

Daniela's visit to NYC - 2005
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