Happy Birthday, Sis!
Today, my sister Kate Criddle turns 55. She is my heroine. Tuned in. Generous. Devoted. A tough cookie AND someone who embodies a life of love and care.
My sister gave me a pair of tuning forks during my bout with cancer last year.
They are beautiful, and generate frequencies associated with healing.
The gift captures much about my sister, Kate Criddle.
She is tuned in. Generous. Devoted.
Today, Kate turns 55. Happy birthday, Sis. I can’t imagine life without you.
***
My wife Rowena urged me to dedicate a substack post to Kate. And I agree she deserves this, and more. Something like an encyclopedia’s worth of appreciation.
Take this past year. Once I was diagnosed with stage-four appendix cancer, Kate went to work. Kate is someone skeptical of conventional western medicine. Or at least open to alternative healing approaches. So she researched non-standard treatments and health-boosting supplements.
I didn’t always agree with the materials she sent. But I had a wider perspective on cancer and my options because of her. And I ate the apricot seeds she sent to fight the tumors in my belly–seeds which contain “promising compounds” according to the scientific literature.
I struck the tuning forks. I hoped the sound reached all the way to the rogue cells growing in my gut. Even if they didn’t, I loved listening to the music made by the two notes. It was therapeutic just to hear the harmony, amplified by a lovely little wooden box that holds the forks upright.
I used the mechanical hand-massager she sent me to help with the neuropathy I developed in my fingers. Our family joked that the device could double as a medieval torture device. Or something out of Dune, when the hero’s pain tolerance is tested.
But I felt nothing but love and gratitude for Kate and her thoughtfulness about my numb, tinging fingers.
***
There’s something dear about my sister and me and fingers. When we were kids, when she was about 3 and I about 7, she would crawl into my bed when scared at night. She would take my fingers in her hands and treat them as little puppets. We called them the “weebijeebies.” My little sister would make up stories in the wee hours. I may have fallen asleep while my hands comforted her.
If so, she’s more than repaid the favor.
Before the cancer care there was the Dad duty. After my mom died in 2014, my Dad needed a lot of support. For several years, my sister was effectively my Dad’s caregiver. He lived near her home in Elberta, Alabama at first. And then moved onto her property in a trailer home.
Kate regularly came over to my Dad’s and cleaned up his kitchen, tackling high stacks of dirty dishes and tossing rotten packets of sliced ham from the refrigerator.
Most importantly, Kate and her husband Daniel lavished my aging father with love.
My Dad was a wonderful man in many ways. He also was a handful. He and a friend of his once dubbed themselves “The Overbearing Brothers.”
They weren’t really joking.
But my Dad’s stubbornness mostly rolled off the shoulders of the daughter he called “Little One.” So much so that Kate and Daniel were happy to host an 80th birthday party for my Father a couple of years ago.
Shout out to Daniel for being up in the middle of the night, smoking a pork shoulder for the yummy dinner we had. Daniel and Kate fed a gathering that included my Dad, my brother Kirk and sister-in-law Melanie, Rowena and me, our son Julius, and my Uncle Pete and Aunt Patti.
It was my Dad’s last birthday. And it was a special one.
***
My sister’s devotion to our Dad is all the more striking because she was the one who most stood up to him when we were kids.
Kate is the youngest. I’m the oldest, and middle-child Kirk and I largely let my Dad off the hook for his occasional tantrums. We tolerated the way he could berate our mother unfairly at times.
Not Kate. The smallest was also the bravest.
“Leave Mom alone,” she would shout, showing us older siblings how to respond to a bully.
Maybe her feisty defence of fairness is what earned her the nickname, “Tuffy Tyler.” My grandmother, my Dad’s mom, gave her that label, I think. And we’re not sure where it came from.
But Kate has been tough, been resilient, her whole life. Even as she’s always had a huge heart.
When my parents moved from Buffalo to Colorado Springs, Kate fell in with a rough crowd. My parents asked me to check in on her at the time, find out what was wrong.
Wrong? She was doing what was right, socializing with the kids others had maligned. The kids others had given up on.
Later, after graduating from college, she worked with troubled youth.
Kate herself ran into troubled times as an adult. But she accepted help and climbed back out of a dark place.
Today, her old sunny smile is back and brighter than ever. It has a lot to do with her excellent husband, Daniel.
The two of them own a landscaping business in the Gulf Shores area.
It’s tough work, cutting lawns and planting gardens amid hot weather and the occasional hurricane. But Kate and Daniel are up to it.
It’s not a surprise to me that they’re business is doing well. That customers love them.
***
After all, love is what my sister has always been about.
Here’s a recent text she sent to our family chat:
The “y’all” reflects the Southern drawl Kate picked up from years living in Alabama.
The “soooo much” is the way our Dad used to say he loved us.
And the hats and beanies? Well, that’s pure Kate the Giver.
My brother told Kate that the Alabama hat he’d had for years had worn out.
So Kate proceeded to send all four of us (Kirk, Melanie, Rowena and me) Alabama hats.
I was surprised by how warm mine is. Does Alabama ever get so cold as to require ear flaps?
Well, as a matter of fact it does. Being surprised by Alabama--by its beauty, its diverse weather, its many lovely people--is another gift Kate has given me. I’m blessed to have visited my Dad and her several times over the years and seen the riches of a state I might otherwise have ignored or written off.
And Kate was right that I needed a cozy cap. After all, San Francisco is often surprisingly chilly.
Call it another example of my Sis being tuned in. Being generous. Being devoted to making others feel warm, welcome, whole.
Thanks for a lifetime worth of care, Kate.
Happy birthday, Sis!