my little sister.

When me and my sister Jo were growing up, we were poor. For reals. Like, my dad had to go door to door asking to mow people's lawns so he would have the money to buy Jo diapers. That sort of thing. Both sides of my family are not well off, and while both my parents are now both proud homeowners and are doing rather well for themselves, wealth does not run in the family.

But, you see, me and Jo never knew this growing up. We're 2 years and 1 month apart, and have always been best friends. I think we've had ONE fight, and it was over in like 6 hours (and we were both pregnant and hormonal and bitchy as hell, so I mean, that doesn't even count). My mom would put our asses out in the fenced in HUGE yard (biggest yard in the trailerpark, bitches!), and we would play in dirt, and on the swingset my pawpaw saved the money to buy us, and on second hand toys that my mama got at garage sales. We had a fucking blast. Jo followed me around faithfully, and we played pretend, and sang stupid songs, and we would go in for lunch, then right back outside to play until it was close to dark. We have home video of me and her just looking at each other and cracking up. We have the same sense of humor, and just get each other.

I love my sister. Jo is the smartest, most driven person I know, to be completely honest. I'll be frank, I'm pretty smart, but that chick is brilliant. She went into the gifted program in 4th grade, stayed in it until high school, and then she took all the advanced courses. She was well rounded, joining me and my clique in speech and debate to do acting, but also excelling in math (my downfall), science, english, and everything else. She seriously was upset when she got a B (which was rare).

She moved to Lafayette after graduating high school to go to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL) on a full scholarship, and did incredibly well, graduating a couple years ago with a degree in accounting. She scored an awesome internship at a big shot accounting firm while still in school, and after graduating, they hired her full time, and she's still there. She has perfect credit. She has a shiny new car. She has a beautiful baby boy, who turned 2 in November. He and my son were supposed to be born only 3 weeks apart, but she had a rough pregnancy and he was born via emergency c-section 7 weeks early, weighing a tiny 3lbs. He was in the nicu for just under a month.

When I had my kiddo 2 months after she gave birth, my son weighed 8lbs, 10 oz., 3 times what hers did. It hit me then how strong she was, because all the time her tiny baby was in the hospital, she never let it get to her, she dutifully pumped breastmilk to make him healthy, she was there in the nicu as much as she could, and she never complained. We would have understood if she did, but she didn't.

Last Friday, she got married. I was to be a matron of honor, but I'm still getting over bronchitis and on Friday, I was practically dead to the world, and I couldn't make it. I'm still devastated. I did have the honor of taking her bridal portraits, and she was (is) beautiful. Congrats, JoJo. I love you more than anything.