“So what are you going to do with  your sister when she comes to visit?” Michael asked me many weeks before she was due to arrive.

“Not sure,” I said.

“Well, you might want to start thinking about it. You don’t want her here with nothing to do.”

“What are you talking about? It’s Asheville. There’s plenty to do here.”

“Are you going to take her to Biltmore?” he asked.

“No, she’s already been there.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I’ll show her downtown, we’ll go people-watching at 5 Walnut . . . one day we’ll walk up to Haywood, Mom and Dad said I should take her to Sierra Nevada.”

“You can do all that in one day. What about the rest of the time?”

“You could do all of that in one day. Meg and I like to stroll, look in the shops, see where the day takes us.”

“Okay. So two days,” he said. I named off a few other things, but Michael still wasn’t convinced. He told me he was talking to his best friend earlier in the day, and they were discussing the fact that most visitors to Asheville only stay for a weekend. Or maybe a long weekend. “But your sister is coming for four days. I don’t think there’s enough to do here for four days.”

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “She’s my sister. We could camp out in the living room watching movies for four days and we’d be happy.”

“She’s not coming down here to watch movies,” he replied.

“No. She’s coming to spend time with me. It doesn’t matter what we do.”  He still didn’t get it. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “She’ll be fine.” We had the same conversation twice more before I forbid him to ask me about it again.

A few weeks later, I picked Meg up at the airport. As we drove to the Sierra Nevada Brewery for dinner I relayed Michael’s concern–and the number of times he expressed it. “So is there something in particular you really want to do while you’re down here?” I asked.

She laughed. “Nope. I really don’t care what we do. We could just watch movies all day if you want . . .”