About Siblings

 I'd like to talk about siblings for a moment.  I have one sister and Tony has none.

But actually, he did have “siblings”, in a way, because Tony's folks had a love for young people and always had a few 'strays' living with them.  As a result, I've never seen any aspects of him being an only child, but I'll let him tell you about all that.

I have a sister, Sherry, just 6 years older than me. Sometimes blessing, sometime pain, but always part of our loving family, as I’d like to think you would agree when thinking about your own siblings.

I have lots of memories of wanting to be 'big' and get to do 'big girl things' like she did.  She got to go to movies with friends, sometimes spend whole summers with the cousins etc.  One year she even 'got' to go to boarding school, although in thinking back, I’m not sure it was a mutually agreed decision at the time.  

But it turned out to be a good thing, with the result that when I got to go 4 years later, I couldn't wait! And the going changed my life.

But the sister I grew up with, well........

One day our whole family, Mother, Daddy, Sherry and I, were somewhere visiting someone for the day. It was a big deal; we didn't do this very often. I don't remember any other kids present, but I do remember that we had been “instructed” to be on our best behaviour,  

Everything was going well until I got in some sort of 'mood' over something.  Being the baby of the family, it was probably some oversight to my status as princess, probably aggravated by Sherry somehow.

It was serious enough to get my Daddy’s attention, and I remember well going with him to another room for a talk. You need to understand that Daddy was not the regular disciplinarian in the family, so being “taken aside” stuck in my memory. I’ll never forget his saying that I needed to “get off my lip or there'd be consequences". 

That certainly got my attention, and I came back into the party a reformed individual, determined, as always, to please my Daddy.

I can still remember sitting down very reverently and then looking over at Sherry.  She made a face. I giggled. Unfortunately,  Daddy mistook it for a harrumph, and I was jerked up and taken to a bedroom, where he removed his belt and gave me the spanking he thought I'd asked for.

I protested the whole time, insisting that "I was laughing", but his anger prevented him from hearing it.  

Years and years later, I told him about that grave travesty, and smiling, he said he didn't remember it, but I'm sure he did.  It was the only spanking I ever got from him; normally all it took was a raised eyebrow to send me running for the straight and narrow. Come to think of it, just remembering that raised eyebrow to this day can motivate me to review everything I’m doing and make sure he would approve. 

My sister never really heeded a raised eyebrow and as a result, she gave me plenty of life lessons that still shape my decisions today. 

Things like: Don't lick a frozen pipe even if she tells you it'll be fun.  It wasn't. Thankfully the school bus driver afforded me my first taste of grown up coffee as he poured it from his thermos over my stuck tongue! (only those of you in cold countries will understand this).

And there were so many other things she taught me NOT to do by example; too many to remember. But the one that sticks out is the absurdity of taking off your winter leggings that Mother forced us to wear to school.  I understood the humiliation she didn’t want to experience very well, as I got it every morning as I waddled into the classroom, SO out of step with the fashion of the day.  These leggings were not of the modern emerging fabrics of the 60's, like nylon and such, but more of the matted thick wool from the Goodwill store, often covered with snow after our walk down the mountain.  What was stupid (and here she could have asked me for advice but didn't), was to continually put her offending leggings into OUR mailbox, so that when the parents came home they would inevitably discover them and dish our appropriate punishments. And this happened multiple times. She should have asked me. I would have suggested the neighbour’s box!

Fortunately, we survived each other and became good friends and even role models!  Or at least for me.  

Today is her birthday, if you read carefully the beginning and know that I’m soon to be 76, you’ll know how old she is!  However, she’s younger in health, mind and body than me, which is an inspiration.

Happy Birthday Sis 

Marsha