I was born last into a family of four kids, spaced so far apart in years that I hardly remember the time when my sisters lived at home with me. When I was born, Sandy was 18; Carol was 14, and Bill was 9. None of us were planned, according to Mom....but in the days before the pill, planning wasn't of much use anyway...the kids WOULD come, sooner or later!
Sandy was the funny one in our bunch. I remember when she came to visit us, she would always sneak in as quietly as she could, hoping to surprise Mom and Dad....I was usually playing outside and saw her come in first, and she'd press her fingers to her lips and it would be our secret. I would be about to burst trying to hold in my giggles, anticipating how she'd make Mom jump by slipping into the kitchen. There were other funny things she did too....one time when we took a trip to visit my Grandmom in Delaware, the four of us kids went to a five and dime store and bought some gag gift-type toys. One of the tricks was a box of little pellet-things you could slip into people's cigarettes to make them explode. Dad was a smoker, and we couldn't wait to try them out on him! Well, we got home and Sandy slipped one into Dad's next cigarette-in-the-pack....and then Mom and Dad announced that we were all going grocery shopping! Back in those days people were allowed to smoke in stores, so we knew we were in for a REAL treat. Dad lit up his cigarette in the bread aisle of Krogers, and KER-POW! He jumped and yelled, JEZUS CRIMINY!!!!" and we were not disappointed!

Carol, on the other hand, was my sweet, motherly sister....the one who "got stuck" taking care of me when I was a baby who cried nonstop, but she really loved to do it. I was not a very "nice" baby and I cried all the time; Mom didn't like to listen to me crying all evening long, so Carol rocked me....and rocked me....and rocked me....every night, for my first two and a half years....to the same recording, one of Elvis Presley singing "Peace In The Valley"....and she wore out three rocking chairs. Finally, one night when I was nearly three, Dad decided I had been rocked long enough; he came and snatched me away from Carol (who would be rocking me STILL, if he hadn't, most likely!) and said, "She is spoiled!" I don't know which of us missed it the most. I know that I was a very sad little waif when Carol grew into womanhood and got married, when I was only five years old, but I was very very proud to be an AUNT when I was only eight, to her daughter, Stephanie, who grew into a child who thought I was a great hero, even though I often acted like it was a major chore to have a little neice tagging along behind me! Two years after that, Sandy had her son, Michael, and I became an aunt again at age ten!



That was the same year, I think, that Bill graduated from high school and went off to college. His second year he moved out of the house and into the college dorm, and I was like an only child....though we still saw him on weekends, and it was a Big Treat when he'd come up and drive me and Mom to town to tour the campus and see all the hippies. I wanted to be a hippy too, when I grew up. Nehru jackets and love beads and bell bottoms were my style, and in the summer Bill and I blasted our favorite music, The Mamas and The Papas, loud enough to split the ceiling open.
When Mom and Dad decided, a few years later, that we should move from Ohio to Delaware to live with my Grandmom, I knew I was going to miss all my siblings very, very much. And that began the long years when I didn't see them much! We saw Carol pretty often, because she and her husband later moved to Delaware also....and Bill later moved to DC, so then we got to see him pretty often too, but we only got to see Sandy once a year. And later on, after Mom died and I got married, I hardly saw any of them! Because I married an Air Force man, and we spent our first ten years of married life living far, far away. I didn't see Sandy for seven years in a row, and Carol for nearly that long! In fact, Mom's funeral, in 1980, was the last time all four of us were together until....Dad's funeral, in 1996! THAT IS A LONG TIME TO BE WITHOUT ONE'S SIBLINGS! I was almost afraid to see my sisters at Dad's funeral, it had been so many years and we'd even lost contact in writing or by phone. But it didn't take long for us to realize how much we had been missing out on and how GOOD it felt to be together again.



The year after Dad died, all of my siblings and their whole families came to my house for Thanksgiving Day. It was the first time the whole family had ever been together, for even though Sandy and her husband had been at Dad's funeral, her son and his wife couldn't be there, and there were a few other additions also, such as a little grand-nephew, Carol's grandson Jordan.
In addition to my husband and kids, and Carol's new husband, Stephanie and Jordan, Sandy and her husband and my nephew Michael and his new wife, there is another brother for us....
For my brother has a partner and best friend in life, Randy,who has found a place within all our hearts, and his mom Anna is a delightful person we've all welcomed as a sister also.

WE, TOO, FEEL SO VERY LUCKY TO HAVE "US"!