Walk Home Together

I have six sister-in-laws. My husband has four sisters and I have two brothers, so there you go. They are all very different and all very lovely and I adore each of them. But today I’m talking about Barbs because her birthday is coming up. 

There’s a whole inside joke that has to do with her love of the TV show “Reba” so we call her Barbs, sometimes Barbara Jean, even thought her name is actually Emily. Are you following? 

When my brother first brought her around we did our best to corrupt her with our ways. At family lake weekends it was sunshine all day and lots and lots of wine and arguing politics at night. She probably spent most of that first summer silently nursing sunburns and hangovers and googling The Southern Strategy but she stuck it out. We were amazed that this beautiful sweet Texan still wanted to hang around. Oh and she’s REAL good at math and there is no way in HELL my brother could have graduated from that school in Tuscaloosa without her helping him with whatever Scooby-Doo calculus us liberal arts dummies had to take. 

Then we discovered something else she’d probably wished she could keep secret…she’s…HANDY! 

In our house growing up, we used a shoe to hammer a nail in the wall to hang a picture. None of us can paint, sew, build, or DIY anything. We would just let whatever fall down or fall apart that wanted to and if it got really bad there was always one of Dad’s clients who owed him a favor.  Can’t tell you how many times we had a room painted or a sink fixed by someone Dad helped “on the bono” (another family joke). Anyway, my point is that we are clueless. 

Cut to Barbs rewiring our light switches, whipping up curtains, and YouTubing how to retile a backsplash because “how hard could it be?” She’s rehabbed at least four houses over the years and Home Depot probably just hands her an orange apron when she walks in. 

She is also very very wise. She was one of the first people who modeled the concept of healthy boundaries in relationships to me, even though I’m much older. She trusts her own judgement and she doesn’t let other people’s expectations and judgements sway her from what is best for herself and her little family of three. I didn’t even know you could do that! 

She’s not perfect though. She doesn’t cuss, like, at all. Which is suspicious. She once brought cauliflower  “mashed potatoes” to Thanksgiving and we’re all still pretty mad about it. She won’t let me give my niece a cell phone to text me with even though she’s clearly gifted and advanced enough at the age of 18 months.

She decorates for ALL the holidays. All of them. Even the dumb ones. Who has a wreath on their door for Groundhog Day ? Her, probably. 

She is a varsity level prankster which just makes us all love her more. She once mailed horrendously cheesy Christmas cards “from us” TO ALL OUR FRIENDS. Also we kept sneaking into each others’ houses to hang the same fugly painting on random walls for YEARS until it was tragically lost during one of our Marie Kondo phases. Oh and once she set up a full-on Christmas tree in my bedroom for absolutely no reason. 

It’s time to wrap this dispatch up but in closing I’d just like to ask each of you to celebrate Barbs’ birthday month appropriately…by pranking your loved ones, being authentically yourself, and possibly retiling your backsplash. It’s not that hard.