My oldest sister, Maureen, turned 70 Sunday. She is five years older than me, enough years apart that I do not think of us as growing up together. She was 10 when I was five. We never walked to school side-by-side. She graduated high school when I was in eighth grade, so we never passed each other in the hall.

Maureen went to college in 1968, to Maryville, Tennessee, because that is where our father went. We grew up in Toledo, Ohio. I didn’t know anything about Tennessee. Or Vietnam, either. In 1968 my oldest sister was as much a mirage as reality.

Maureen came back with a Tennessee husband after her junior year of college. At that point I was so clueless I could not spell sex, much less attempt it, and here my eldest sister was getting married.

They went back to Tennessee then off to New Mexico, where Steve pursued his Ph.D.

Maureen eventually got a doctorate, too, in education. They also got a son, Scott, the natural way. I went to visit them in Oklahoma, where Steve was teaching and Maureen was commuting to graduate school.

There were family visits through the 1970s until they petered out in the 1990s. For years, the family gathered in Phoenix for Christmas at our parents’ retirement home. Maureen and Steve would drive in, seemingly a surprise, from South Dakota or California, arriving late on Christmas Eve. Did the family not know they would show? Some of the time, at least. That is how I remember it.

Maureen had been the very helpful oldest daughter, being both pressed into service and going above and beyond the call of duty to help our mom, who had five children in nine years, as American families did in those days.

Maybe that wore Maureen out on sisterhood. I never thought to ask.

Much later, in the 2000s, our mom went to live at a senior care facility near Maureen after our father died. Now I flew out for Christmas during those five years, staying with Maureen and Steve.

The rest of the year, on Sundays Maureen would call with mom on the phone, either visitng at her house or from the care facility. I spoke with and saw Maureen more in those years then the two decades proceeding or since our mom’s passing in 2012.

Now, all of a sudden she is 70 years old. First and last, she is always my eldest sister.

Good job, sis.