My sister Dianne Thorington and I share a greeting card yearly that says, “The older I get… the less you bug me.”

Through time I have come to realize that my sister is one of the most generous and fun loving people on the planet! Something I would not have said in my youth.
My sister was the first born, my oldest sibling with my brother in the middle and then me the baby. We are five years apart. So she wasn’t interested in “hangin’ with a younger sister,” understandably. I thought she didn’t like me. She just didn’t know I was around.
Growing up was hard to do. We struggled with it as a family. Our cherished mother was SO much fun and a best friend who needed to be at the center of everything, but not so much – a mother. So? Our boundaries (what the hell is that and are we allowed to have them?!) made for many misunderstandings. My poor dad.
THANK YOU God that my sister and I have lived long enough to deeply appreciate and love each other in ways and through circumstances I could never have imagined.
Dianne was the first woman in the IATSE Union in South Florida. A position that caused much resentment as any woman breaking the glass ceiling receives. She taught shop at the University of Montana before joining me in Southern California where she ended up being a secretary at Paramount to Gary David Goldberg, creator of the TV show Family Ties. Soon after that she became an associate producer on Family Ties. She went on to achieve a license in special education for children with intellectual disabilities where she taught for ten years in Baltimore, MD. She has been married to her physicist husband for 41 years and has two children, a son and a daughter and a grandson. Through a series of insane circumstances she broke her ankle and has ended up as an amputee. She helps others struggling to find their way through a missing limb.

What can I say? I. AM. YOUR. FAN and a very lucky younger sister.

Gail Edwards