Jessica Gazzola

She who never stopped talking; she who whipped me with her uniform knee socks; she who can still push my buttons like a master engineer and make me laugh until I pee… my sister became a mother today.  I anticipated this event long before I even knew she was pregnant, but I love how the feelings rise up and surprise me.  It is such an awesome experience to bear witness to a person whose story I know so intimately, whose life paralleled mine for two decades, as they cross through the well-worn threshold into parenthood.  It’s awesome and it tickles me.  I still picture her as a squeaky voiced preschooler and a too-cool teenager; the girl who named her cabbage patch kid Zoe (because it’s the best name in the world!) and whose “babies” were infinite and precious.  Now she has a fuzzy-headed beauty of a boy to raise.  She is a person so different from our time playing and growing around the trees in the cul-de-sac – settled and marginally less squeaky.  But she is the same off-the-wall, booty shakin’, bossy-pants and (damn!) that’s going to make her a great mom!   Congratulations, sis!