Vicki is fifty. I cannot come to the party. I will not be there to make toasts, set up embarrassing visual installations, drink, or glow individually and corporately. This page is a way I could think of to be there, besides floating there on the sea of dreams and imagination. I am not Vicki, so I can only say what her existence has meant to me, and how she resides in my own memory and experience. In that respect, this is about me. But all our experiences of one another—those that are “about us” individually—are surely connected on a deeper level, and are just as much “about us” collectively. So, this is about Vicki, too (and anybody else’s big sister, as well). She has given me gifts only a big sister could give a little brother.
   I do not remember a twelve-year-old Vicki who, I am told, gushed over my arrival home, or a thirteen-year-old Vicki who wore white Far Side glasses and refused to reveal the braces on her teeth with a smile, but I was there. I know these cruel stories, I dutifully repeat them, and I have access to photographic documentation! I do remember the fifteen-year old Vicki who babysat my three-year-old little white butt, sitting on the edge of the bed ready to torment me if I did other than make a proper show of taking a nap. Of course, all these Vickis are one Vicki—the one who has shown me such love, even when caring for me was no more than her allotted task. Small children are lucky indeed, who receive the kind of love and attention Vicki gave me.
   I remember her sitting on the couch with me, and our singing the quintessentially Baptist hymn “To God Be the Glory” together. I remember her sitting cross-legged on the bathroom counter inches from the mirror. “What are you doing?” “I’m putting on makeup.” “How old are you?” “Sixteen.” I see it so clearly; whether I have remembered or constructed it, it’s her voice alright. She complained about her body. A woman has got to trust you a lot to do that. I also remember her boyfriends, and my skepticism—the kind only an insider can have—even at such an incipient age.
   (Note: This is not a eulogy.) And though I could not name them then, I remember her heedless appreciation for the experience of life, and her capacity for lavish affection, both of which continue to this day, still shaping who I am. Thank you, Vicki.
   When she first had a family of her own, I was too young to understand the tidy contentedness one displays for houseguests. But I did know that when I visited alone she was a Vicki who was more real to me: once in Dallas with Jeremy the year he turned two, I turned ten, and Vicki turned twenty-two, once in Oklahoma City three years later. She allowed me the notion that she was charmed at times when I did not feel I could accomplish that in front of anyone else. Thanks, Vicki.
   I was, as a developmental principle, self-absorbed during some difficult adult years for my sister. I developed the capacity to judge in ways that were parochial, thinking they were universal, and grace upon my soul, hope I have outgrown it. She was developing some more extraordinary capacities at a time when ordinary people think they are done growing up. Her obvious growth gave me one of the first ideas I ever had that development is continuous. She has continued changing through more struggles and victories. Sometimes I think she works too hard at developing. Sun Longji, a Taiwanese sociologist and noted humanist wrote, “To be human, one must create oneself—one must make a work of art out of oneself—out of one’s body, one’s appearance, one’s mind, intellect, passion, and will.” Unusual words for an East Asian. Vicki, in her own right and in the life she projects about her, makes herself an ongoing work of art. In fact, I think she should spend more time just breathing and being. Or as the title of a book on meditation puts it: Don’t Just Do Something—Sit There!
   I remember taking an eighth-grade assessment that compiled my interests and aptitudes into a single career category: “interior decorator.” You will forgive me if at that age I kept this information from my peers. I have been guilty of the conceit that I always learn from the mistakes of my siblings, that I am somehow not like them. The truth is, when I understood that Vicki was studying interior design and becoming a designer, I remembered that career test and was deeply affirmed. It suggested we were alike. There will always be a part of me that wants to be just like my big sister. Though this impulse is so ordinary, it is also a gift. Thank you, Vicki. I know on some level I will always be a little brother admiring his big sister; that is part of some of the oldest rings in the tree of my life.
   Happy Birthday, Vicki, and fifty more! May you be well. May the redeemed memories of your pilgrimage enfold you as a splendid mantle, deep knowledge of the present crowning each moment.

   With love,