Can you see the rainbow?” The text pinged my phone while I was on hour eight or twenty of laying in my bed with the flu. My husband and daughters had been gone all day for our niece’s graduation, but I had to skip it because, after months of dodging it, it was my turn to be sick.

But my little sister, Alex, who lives right over the hill on the other side of the barnyard, wasn’t going to let me miss an opportunity to see a rainbow, a good remedy for the pukes.

Earlier that day she snuck in to put cookies and fresh baked bread on my kitchen counter, trying to be sneaky, but forgetting that my phone dings every time she gets close to the house, a little hack in the form of an app that helps us with our morning kid pick-ups and evening kid drop-offs.

“Are you going for a walk?” she texted me the evening before, just as I was opening the gate and heading on my two-mile loop to the east pasture and back. “I’ll meet you!”

The ping on her phone told her I was leaving the house and she needed to escape too. Who knew that the tracking app would come in so handy for all sorts of non-emergencies?

But I was glad she caught up with me, a sentence I would have never uttered when I was twelve and she was seven and following me on my after-school walks up the creek. I used to turn around and yell at her to go home, now we coordinate our escapes together.

My little sister, she’s better at it than me. She’s always been the social one, the one to pick up the phone, the one to ask what we’re doing or how we’re doing and the one to make sure everyone knows what’s going through her mind at all times, an endearing feature of her personality that shines most in stressful or beautiful moments.

Which means we get the play-by-play of angst that occurs when she’s trying to get a fresh horse to cross a muddy creek, but then…“Oooo, look at those daisies!!” she squealed while riding through our calf crop with our uncle and dad against hurricane-force winds.

“I just love them, look at all of them,” she gushed as I continued to fight with my flighty pony and the wind, both seemingly out to kill me that day.

My uncle and I looked at each other and chuckled. What a very Alex thing to say. Then we looked over at my dad who sat horseback taking pictures of us because, “The sky is just so blue! It’s beautiful. I don’t want to forget it.”

What a very Dad thing to say.

Yes, it seemed both bluebirds on their respective shoulders were hanging on despite the wind, reminding me to invite mine back.

Reminding me to get up and look outside.

Reminding me that it can be better with company.

And fresh bread. When did she learn to make fresh bread?

Anyway, I’m feeling better now. If you need me, well, call Alex. She knows where I am.