Sprinkling Sunshine on My Days

So far there have been three times in my adult life when I was so elated that I actually jumped up and down like a winning game show contestant.  The first time was in college when I spent the summer working at a camp.  Every week, about an hour after our high school campers arrived, we had to take a miserable three hour hike involving scavenger hunt type orienteering, gathering the pieces of our tent poles along the way.  When we finally reached the campsite and set up our tents, we cooked our dinner of hot dogs over a campfire – in July in East Texas.  The hotdogs were usually frozen, so cooking them over an open flame really just scorched the outside and left the inside frozen.  That’s not the elation part of the story. 

After the last hike on the final week of the summer, right as we arrived at the campsite, the camp director pulled us aside from the campers and told us to go take a break.  I was so happy to skip the campfire that I sprinted out of the woods to the room where she sent us.  But when I got there and saw a note on the door and realized there was more inside than simply getting away for a few minutes (there was a tv with a movie and Chili’s hamburgers waiting inside), it felt like a tiny glimpse of what getting to heaven is going to feel like, jumping up and down exciting. 

The second time was when Trent and I were on vacation, talking to a Disney cast member on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom and he asked us to be Grand Marshals in the parade.  No further explanation necessary.

(When I went through all these stories recently, someone commented that I didn’t mention the birth of my children.  Yeah, because that was hard, physical labor following nine solid months of underlying worry, so my overwhelming feeling was relief.  Relief.)

The third time I was jump-up-and-down crazy excited was Christmas Day 2011.

She did it.  SHE DID IT!  My sister actually knit the sweater of my dreams, just like Mrs. Weasley makes for all the Weasley children and for Harry, Gryffindor colors. 

You might know that I have asked Casey to knit this sweater for me a million times, often publically, and she told me she would never do it.  She old me I was overestimating her knitting skills (untrue) and that wearing a hand knit sweater based on Harry Potter was a level of nerdiness that she wouldn’t support.  But obviously she loves me.

Let me set the scene:  Christmas day, I open this gift:

A Gryffindor scarf!  Thank God, because I have wanted one for years, and a few inches of one has been clogging up my knitting needles for the last few months.  She’s the best.

So after all the presents were opened and my brother-in-law Chris asked me to go check on something in the laundry room.  It was one of those weird requests where you know something’s up.  I’m on my way to the laundry room when I see, sitting on the hearth next to a roaring fire, a lumpy package wrapped in brown paper.  There is a note from Mrs. Weasley saying that their owl was tied up so she delivered a little something by floo and Happy Christmas.  It was one of those moments where for a split second I thought this. is. real.  Mrs. Weasley made a sweater for me.

Oh Case.  I can’t even express what this gift means to me.  It’s the sweater, of course.  It’s the moment when she made the book real.  It’s the fact that she knit a sweater – how is that even possible?- and she gave it to me.  It’s more, so much more.

When were were growing up our bedrooms were connected.  It’s a long story, but we taped a little card in the doorway with a cheesy poem that I guarantee we can both still recite.  But the sentiment is still true and still the same:  I thank God for my sister.