My baby sister, Hannah Ruth Rice, nicknamed Hammer Roo in our family because the boys couldn't say her name when Mom and Dad brought her home from the hospital, graduates from high school this Saturday. In honor of that great occasion that I won't be able to attend, I wrote a letter that was read during her senior roast on Wednesday night at our family's church, Woodland PCA in Hattiesburg. They have a nice meal for the graduating seniors, then drag out every naked baby photo and embarassing story they can get from their families. I love this tradition, especially since I graduated a long time ago and now I have immunity. So in celebration of the big day tomorrow, here's that letter, as well as a photo of Hannah that I totally stole from her boyfriend's web site. Hopefully he doesn't sue me for stealing his work. Enjoy, and leave Hannah your congratulations in the comments section.

Dear Hannah,
You didn’t really think you were going to get out of this whole thing without hearing from me, did you? Silly girl. I’m really sorry I can’t be there to say all this in person, but you know I don’t easily pass up opportunities to embarrass my siblings.
I remember that when the boys graduated a few years ago, I felt kind of weird about it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Now that you’re graduating, I know exactly wht it’s weird. Because it makes me feel old. Very, very old. Older than I felt when the boys graduated. Their advent into the world is somewhat hazy in my mind, since I was only three years old. But I remember you. When you were little, I thought you were my baby as much as anyone else’s. Mom brought you into this world, and it’s thanks to her and dad that you’re a well-adjusted member of society, but there are an awful lot of photos of me hauling you around on my hip when you were a baby. And since we all know that shortly after Audrey’s debut in the family, she announced her exclusive rights to Mom’s attention with her first words, “MY mama,” you were even more at my mercy. This was unfortunate for you. I am pretty sure it’s my fault that in one of our family portraits you have stitches in your lower lip. The night before those photos were taken, I started playing a game with you in the pitch-black living room and got you all hyped up and then let you run around. It was kind of like letting go of one of those wind-up toy cars. You, predictably, whacked your face on the coffee table and started bleeding.
Come to think of it, that may not have been entirely my fault. Some of my more vivid memories of you as a kid have to do with you running into things. When we lived on East 16th Street in Yazoo City, our house had a split-level dining room and living room area, meaning that there was one stair step between the two rooms. Everyone else in the family figured out the whole thing about the step pretty quickly, but not you. We got used to the sound of you running full-speed across the dining room, failing to notice the step into the kitchen, and running into it with your shins. You always wiped out onto the kitchen floor and lay there for a minute, with this expression of shock on your face, like someone had come in at night and installed a step in the kitchen in an attempt to sabotage you.
Then there was the incident with the porch swing at the cabin. It was probably not the smartest thing for Aaron and Ryan and I to spend large chunks of time seeing how high we could make the porch swing go, but we did it without any bloodshed until one day when you walked out onto the porch, looked at the swing arching back and forth at the speed of a rocket, and then decided it would be a great idea to just, you know, WALK TOWARDS THE SWING. We couldn’t have stopped it at that point. Of course, when the swing caught you under the chin and sent you flying across the porch, the carnage was deemed to have been “All Our Our Fault For Not Watching Out For Our Baby Sister,” like we were just supposed to know that you were planning to take a lunge at the swing. I won’t even get into the time you jumped off the side of the pool and mananged to bust open both your face and Mom’s head. I don’t think you developed any depth perception until you were about ten. But, nonetheless, I’m sorry if you have any permanent scars.
When you got older, there was a protracted period of time when the boys and I were pretty mean to you, and I’m also sorry about that. In our defense, you were the world’s worst tattletale as a child. But I’m pretty sure that didn’t justify some of the things we did. I do like to think that the boys were worse than me. Bear in mind that it was the two of them who cut your hair off with safety scissors, not me, and I also didn’t make fun of your resulting short haircut. Still, I wasn’t always the greatest sister, and I’m sure you rejoiced when I went away to college. But one of my favorite things about our family now is that somewhere between the days when we used to beat each other up over who was going to sit in the front seat and now, when you’re 18 and headed off to college, we all became really good friends.
And you turned out to be a pretty cool person, much cooler than I am, even though I like to think I had something to do with the fact that you have good musical taste. You’re a good friend and you’re funny and you think about important things and you don’t really care too much what everybody else thinks about you, which is good, trust me. Also, you don’t run into furniture and walls nearly as much as you used to. I’m really proud that you’re my sister.
One of the things I told the boys at their roast was that they should always remember that family are the people who will always be there for you. That doesn’t mean nothing will change. We’ll come and go around the country and the world. We’ll get married and bring new people into the family, and we’ll be richer and laugh harder for it. But when bad things happen, and when you need to remember who you are and who loves you no matter what happens, you will go home. And even though I and the boys and Audrey won’t always be there in the house and you won’t either, you’ll learn that home and the people who are home to you will never be more than a phone call away. And when you need to know that, I hope you’ll call me. I love you. Congratulations on your graduation. Be careful, keep an eye out for all those stairs and watch your head.
Your big sister,
Haley