Yolanda at the white house

Got the word yesterday that my sister Yolanda will join me and my wife Kafi for lunch with President Bush inside the White House next Wednesday. When I called her yesterday to tell her, Yolanda started crying. She's never been inside the WH and I'm not sure she imagined she would ever be. If somebody thinks I've done something worthy of meeting the President, then Yolanda surely belongs right there with me. After our mother died and our fathers were gone, Yolanda raised me. She pushed me to achieve. She tried to enroll me in some horse-jumping-a-fence-on-the-brochure prep academy (she didn't force me to go). She urged me to apply to Stanford (I did, two years later). She also threatened not to come to my college graduation if I did not finish that last incomplete (I finished). For years Yolanda struggled, especially when she was a 22 year old trying to raise three teens alone. Now she is at rest, relatively, with her husband David and their two small children, Gina and Jacob. I'm excited that something I'm involved with could bring her some joy.