People - My Sister Yadira

Yadira -I have been told- means "beautiful among the beautiful" in some exotic tongue. Since she was a girl my sister has been pretty although for Rubenesque tastes. With a hiatus, since I demanded being put with her in the same kindergarten class, we went to the same class until we graduated from high school. Just after she graduated, she was in an unplanned pregnancy. Yadira was not going to give up her dreams to become a teacher- attended college at the same time took care of her baby. And later worked for a year in a remote village in the highlands, visiting her baby only on weekends, until she got a job closer to her home.

Yadira has always been entrepeneurial and thrifty, having acquired more real estate and bussinesses than anyone else in the extended family. She has always been a model of perseverance, visiting mom every week, rain or shine. Once, we traveled together to visit mom, then living in a village in the highlands. An enourmous mudslide had destroyed miles of road the day before. Yadira and I held hands and crossed a train bridge jumping from one sleeper to the next, 150 feet above whitewater, and then walked 10 miles for a tracherous, muddy track until we reached mom's cabin.

A couple of years ago, we lived half an hour away from each other but did not visit very often, and I am sorry for that now. It has been said that you value something or someone only when one losses that person or thing and learns the hard way how important that person or valuable thing was for you, and miss the loss badly.