Her Vietnamese name, translated to English, means: "Miracle of Tomorrow"

One fateful summer night when we were children, a mosquito bit my sister Lynn’s right eyelid while she was asleep. The next morning, her eyelid was swollen shut. It was disgusting. She couldn’t even see out of it. With her two front teeth still missing and her sauntering around the house with only one good eye, she resembled a 5-year-old Vietnamese-looking version of Igor or Quasimodo. My mom watched her with pity and asked her not to scratch her eyelid or else it would get even puffier. My dad would just punch the refrigerator in rage because he was afraid the bite would scar and disfigure her face.

I’ll never ever forget that summer because it was the only time in my entire life that I’ve ever been better-looking than my sister. I loved every minute of it.

I wasn’t a very good brother when we were growing up. I constantly fought to grab the spotlight from Lynn because I wanted everyone in our family to adore ME more than her. I always took the credit for washing dishes. And the minute one of our aunts or uncles smiled at Lynn and asked her to do something cute like a handstand, you could count on me to come running down the stairs to show them the latest piece of impressive artwork I was working on. The most heartbreaking thing is that my tactics always worked. Everyone in my family would crowd around me, amazed at how talented I was, while my lame duck sister watched on, completely and ignorantly in awe of me.

My sister spent most of her childhood following me everywhere, asking me questions about the world, and I would feed my own ego by expertly answering her questions — even if I had to stretch the truth, out of necessity.

“Hueyth,” she used to say (she calls me Huey for a complicated reason that I won’t get into right now). “Where do babiesth come fromth?”

All my memories of my sister growing up have her talking in a lisp for some reason.

“Are you stupid or something?” I said. “They are squeezed out of your belly button after incubating for 9 months.”

“What’sth incu... incu... incubat... What’sth that mean, Hueyth?”

“Well, idiot, it means... You know what, it doesn’t matter what that word means. Your brain isn’t developed enough to understand. Just know that it has something to do with incubators.”

I had no idea what I was talking about.

And a couple years later she would tug at my sleeves and say, “Hueyth! Hueyth!”

“What NOW?”

“What’sth E=MC² meanth?”

“Well it’s quite simple, Lynn. It means energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.”

“Yesth, I know... But whath doesth thath meanth?”

“It’s the greatest of all the equations. You see that rock over there on the ground? Let’s say I take the rock, which has lots of mass in it, and let’s say I threw it really fast — as fast as the speed of light squared—”

“What wouldth happenth?”

“That very rock itself would turn into pure energy. Electricity, to be exact. But I won’t get too much into the mathematics of it all. It requires a strong grasp of quantum physics, which at the moment you do not have.”

Again, I had no idea what I was talking about.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my sweet little sis because today is her 22nd birthday and I just want to let her know that now that we’re all grown up, I no longer see her as my loyal little sidekick, but as my beautiful, intelligent, enormously capable sister.

...

Lynn, you’re a better person than I am. You need to know that. I’ll never be your equal when it comes to inner beauty. So quit looking up to me so much, kiddo, and see me for who I really am: just a regular flawed guy. But you. You’re exceptional. I’m very proud of the person you’ve grown up to be. I just want you to know that there is no one alive on this earth that I love more, and this includes Michael Jordan. And since I love you so much, little grasshopper, I’m going to come clean about a little lie I told you: YOU WILL NOT HAVE ANY TREES GROW FROM OUT OF YOUR STOMACH IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY SWALLOW WATERMELON SEEDS. So just chill.

And, have a happy birthday.