Siblings....

I posted this on another persons blog, but as I read it I felt I really needed to post it on my own blog.....here's to you my brother and sisters......

My life growing up was maybe a little off-kilter. My brother is 4 years older than me, while my younger sisters are 11 and 12 years younger than me. While I was a middle child, I grew up more as an only child for many years. My best friends were my pets (horses, cats, dogs, sheep, goats..etc) due to living in a very rural setting in my early years. Can we say ‘someone’ had a very vivid imagination?!

My brother and I, as kids, had our moments of camaraderie, but they were fleeting. I have to admit he was a great older brother and was very protective of me…..and bossy. You have to admit, who wants a runty little tag-a-long sister when you’re playing with all your buddies, but when I wrapped that kite string around my arm he was there to get it off before my arm turned purple! He was the one who told me to buck up when I was 12 and broke my leg on the ski slope….I think he was more afraid of it being broken than I was! Ron was the one who ‘tried’ to teach me how to dance and knew how my hair looked the best on me. I went for many years not having him in my life because he was lost in his own world. One of the last fights we had was when I was 15 and whatever the fight was about I remember taking a great big swing at him AND connecting…thank-you my brother for not reciprocating!! In more recent years it has been a real pleasure to reconnect with my brother and getting to know him again. Amazingly, we have an awful lot in common.

My sisters were much later coming into my life…I was a tween-ager when they were born 15 months apart. It was pretty cool at first to have these two mischievous babies running around, but in the life of a teenager it became a real pain once the advantages of a live-in babysitter became apparent. Shana and Casey were barely into school for a few years by the time I married and moved 1000 miles away. Who knew they would come and live with Randy and I for a couple of years…but they did, and that is when I truly got to know my sisters as people, rather than just a couple of pesky little runts. We’ve had many laughs that a sister…6-months pregnant…. still had the chutzpah to chase them down in the snow and rub their faces in it or chase them up the stairs when they thought it was okay to lip off. They moved back home when my first child was born and it would be another few more years before I would connect with them again. Now as they have grown into adulthood and have had children of their own, it has become easier to have common ground and experiences with them. Our family gatherings have become so much fun…more than I could have hoped for.

As we get older I think we’ve come to value having our families more and more. We are all so different….but family.