Happy Birthday Trish

Can't let the day go by without saying "Happy Birthday" to my (almost) twin sister. We weren't really twins. We were born 15 months apart on the same day of the month: the 23rd. She was my constant companion for almost 20 years, until I moved off to California. But you know it's a good relationship when you can not see one another for months and months, and then just drop in, and it's like you were together just the day before.

We shared a bed until I graduated from high school. We shared a bicycle. We shared our clothes, until I got mad one year because a blouse I wanted to wear was dirty, and I announced that she could never again wear my clothes!! Ooops...that also meant that I couldn't wear hers, and that messed up my wardrobe more than it inconvenienced her. Rats.

We loved the barn cats and made up elaborate names and life stories for the endless bunch of them that came and went during the years we shared milking duties. We schemed about boys, and studied vocabulary words, and memorized scriptures, and tormented our little brother while we milked.

We rode horses together. We picked flowers together. We made a cool "hospital" in the little hiding place under the lilac tree in the yard where we'd take care of our patients---the little brothers and sister. We'd put damp lilac leaves on their wounds. We'd get turnips from the garden, and peel, slice and eat them with salt there in our hiding place. Once a year, our mother and big sisters would give the cellar a thorough cleaning, and we'd set up "school" down there in the newly empty space. Our pupils were the brothers and sister who were small.

We were an unbeatable bale hauling team. I'd usually toss them up on the wagon and she'd stack. We liked stopping for a pop at the little store on the way back down the highway from a field our dad rented several summers in a row. She actually didn't like carbonated sodas, but she'd drink a non-fizzy orange something. We were tough enough to haul the milk cans into town, too, and unload them ourselves onto the creamery's loading dock. There was always a lot of work to do, and she was never a slacker. We were excellent hired hands.

She was beautiful, too. She had fabulous blond hair that was naturally platinum. When we were going to college in the same town, but different schools, it was fun to go places with her and watch boys try not to stare too obviously. She was lots of fun, too, and people liked to hang around with her. I wish she was still around to talk to. I wish she was still around to see her gorgeous, wonderful grandchildren growing up. I hope people tell them stories about Grandma Trish, and about how she was a helpful, giving, sharing person who overcame a lot of difficult things in her life to become a really fine woman. I loved her.

Here she is, forty years ago at my wedding, when our uncle tried to marry her off to CoolGuy. She was engaged at that point to another guy, so she wasn't too eager to marry my choice.