Happy Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. I'm 54, she would have been 53, but she died two years ago. We were born 15 months apart--to the day. Once my mom told me why; I guess since I was a mother at the time she felt I was a fellow adult to whom she could tell that story. It was amusing, and it revealed my mom to be the youngster she was at that time--24 with three kids.
(It seems that her mother was sleeping on their couch that night,visiting in order to be to an early morning appointment, and my mom was too embarrassed to get up in the middle of the night and fetch her birth control from the bathroom in case her mom would awaken and figure out that---oh no!---her married daughter had sex with her husband...[they'd been married six years.] My mom laughed about it when she told me.) At the time, I was pregnant with #3 in three years. Hyper-fertility runs in the family?

My sister's birth has an story, too. Our dad worked days as a farmer and nights at the concrete batch plant at the site of large dam being built about 60 miles from our home. My mom would fret because it was dangerous and he got very little sleep during that year. He was usually home by morning to milk their couple of cows--she milked them in the evening. But this day he didn't come home and she was at the hospital. I don't know who milked, or who drove her there, or where my two older sisters and the baby (Me) were hanging out. But Mother was there, with a new baby girl and he came strolling in around 11:00 A.M. She been worrying about him being hurt or killed at work all the while she was in labor and getting a ride and finding a sitter and--and--She was so happy to see him alive and well she forgot to yell at him for stressing her so.

There'd been a chance to work overtime for a few hours and he, and the friend he rode with, took the opportunity to earn the extra money. As they drove into the north end of town (our farm was seven miles south of town) my dad said to his friend driving, (again--according to Mother--) "Let's swing past the hospital and see my new baby." There were no cell phones, he didn't have any way to know for sure. My mom said his friend was all "Yeah, right," and then had to eat his words when VOILA there was a new baby!

And she was the CUTEST baby! Her hair was dark at first, but grew into a white fluff that stayed platinum blonde her entire life. I'm sure that many people assumed she colored it. Nope. She was always a little disappointed that none of her children inherited her super blonde hair. Maybe a grandchild will.

We were always treated as a unit, even though we didn't look alike. Yes, we were both blonde, but I was usually taller and my hair was never as pale as hers. But our proximity in age and our matching dresses, which were handed down from our two older sisters, tended to blur us together for many. And, we were together all the time. Since we lived out there on the farm, we were each other's playmate.

Then when we got old enough to do chores like milking and hauling hay we were a killer team. As teenagers, we were buff and cute. One summer my dad decided to haul his own milk to town every morning. So we usually did it. Hey--it was a chance to drive! We'd pull up to the creamery and back up to the rack to unload the ten gallon cans. We may have had about nine cans, I forget. And it was hard work--the rack was positioned for the milk trucks, not a pick-up. We had to lift them up. One of us would get on the rack to receive and the other stand in the bed and hand them up. We probably set ourselves up for a lifetime of bad backs, but we were NOT going to ask any of those men standing around to help. We were tough enough. Looking back, the men probably enjoyed the show. It also makes me realize why we didn't get many dates. We probably scared off the boys.

We slept in the same bed until I graduated from high school and left home. She was very noble about this considering that I was a bed-wetter for a long, long time. We took swimming lessons together--she passed beginners in one year, and it took me three. We took piano lessons together. She didn't really like it, but I still play today. We tormented and tortured our little brother together. He has grown up to be a very fine adult despite us. The biggest problem she had as my sister is that school was easy for me. I was a good reader and spelling was a snap. She struggled with reading, needed speech therapy, and didn't spell worth a darn most of her life. This was a problem because we went through the same schools with teachers expecting her to be me academically. She always worked really hard and got mediocre results and I didn't work very hard and did well. She became an avid reader as an adult because she spent so much time convalescing from a ridiculous number of surgeries and reading became a delight to her. Practice makes perfect!

This blog will be much too long if I continue to tell you all the things we did together, or the ways in which our lives diverged. But she was such a great sister, that it didn't matter how far apart we were geographically, or in lifestyle, as soon as we got back together, it was just like no time had gone by. I was so shocked when she died suddenly just after her 51st birthday. It's like a part of me is gone, too. I still have four other sisters living. As dear as they all are, none of them have the same significance as she does because for almost twenty years, everything I did, she did too, mostly--right beside me. So when I say a part of me is gone, it really is--my other ears, my other eyes--the other half of our childhood. The hole heals over, but the surface is soft as a cobweb and I have to be careful so it doesn't tear.