Some very good suggestions were submitted. The first one was submitted by someone who posts under the name of "mers." This person asked that I write some memories of my younger sister, Meredith Lee Di Natale Morris, and discuss how great she is.

Merry and I are vastly different. We always have been. I was always the good girl and she was always the black sheep. Now I am the one with all of the issues. Go figure.

In elementary school, I was always stressed out and uptight and trying so hard to get good grades...trying so hard not to get into trouble. Meanwhile, Merry was smoking behind the church building when she was supposed to be in Pioneer Girls. I always tried to stay as far away from trouble as I possibly could...and it seemed like Merry looked for it.

I always cared to the point of paranoia what everyone thought about me, and she couldn't have cared less. I was careful to coat each and every word in tact. . .she told it like it was. I would always try to make her more like me...cause I couldn't stand it when she got in trouble. And then at some point, I wished I could be more like her.

Sometimes we would fight like cats and dogs. I remember getting into knock-down drag out fights. And then our mom and dad would put us in a room together and we weren't allowed out until we put our arms around eachother and sang this song called "We love eachother." The song originated as a ploy to make our parents think we were so cute that they'd let us out of our room. But then it backfired and they made us put our arms around eachother and sing it everytime we fought, before we were allowed out. as penance.

So we would, through clenched teeth, sing that we loved eachother as fast as we could, hating every moment of it. And our parents would say, "nope, go back in there and don't come out until you sing it like you mean it." Infuriating! If we wanted to get out of our room, we would have to work together to sing our song like we meant it. Eventually we ended up laughing, anyway.

For many years, Mer and I shared a double bed. We both were sent to bed at 7:00 pm every night. Of course, we couldn't fall asleep at that point. So we would while away the hours trying to make eachother laugh. Eventually, she would fall asleep first. And I would be left alone, wide awake. And i would pry open her eyelids and try to get her to wake up and talk to me, but she'd already be in dreamland. It wasn't nearly as much fun after she fell asleep.

Even to this day, if Merry and I happen to be somewhere where we have to share a bed, we will not be able to contain ourselves...we will end up laughing until we are crying. At the stupidest things that no one else would understand. Two years ago, I was going through such a difficult time that I asked Merry to come and spend the night. Jason was out of town and my kids had been totally sick and I was struggling inside with a lot of things. So she came. And when it was time for bed, it was just like old times. We just started laughing about stuff, some of the same stuff that used to make us laugh as kids. I felt like it was the first time I had laughed in ages and ages. And then, as always, she drifted off to sleep. And i was left wide awake. But this time I restrained myself from prying open her eyelids.

Merry ...as I write her name, I think to myself, are we really grown up now? Could it really be that all of these years have passed by? It's crazy...it feels like yesterday that we were laughing in bed on a hot summer's evening...she, four...I, seven... the sun still completely up, our neighbors mowing the lawn, and the neighborhood kids coming up to our bedroom window to see if we could play. We had to pretend like we were doing something super fun and not let them see that we were in our nightgowns and in bed...we couldn't let everyone know our mom sent us to bed at 7:00 pm. It would have ruined us socially. It was our secret. We kept it well.

I guess it doesn't matter how much time has gone by, those two little girls live on. And I'm so thankful that they do. And she's still the same Merry, and I'm still the same me, and we are still very different, but we are always an inseparable part of eachother. We are eachother's history.

And if you ever hear two small girls laughing on a hot summer's night, you can go up to their bedroom window and ask them to come out and play, and they will tell you they are involved in something way too much fun to discontinue. And if you think they may be bluffing, stick around outside and listen, and you will learn that this is indeed more true than even they know.