The other morning, Facebook told me that it was National Siblings Day and so I spent that lazy Sunday morning perusing through my Facebook friends’ posts of old pictures and well wishes to their beloved siblings. I had never heard of such a day and suspected that Hallmark was behind it with a new and lucrative line of “Sibling” greeting cards, but, okay, I went with it. It was nice to see childhood photos against grown-up pictures of today, and it was nice to read some funny memories shared from the decades in between.

When paging through our old family photo albums to find some childhood pictures to post of my siblings and me, it made me realize (once again) that no one on this earth can ever know the path that I’ve walked like my siblings know – because they’ve walked the same path, and we share the same roots. We have been together since day one, and we still unconditionally stick together 40-to 50-something years later. The decades in between have been full of joy and pain and laughter and arguments and holidays shared and family vacations and helping each other to paint walls in our respective new houses. I am so appreciative that I have siblings who understand me, who value me, who go way, way back with me to before we were even humanly capable of retaining memories. My siblings are my lifelong best friends, the precious few who I know will always have my back, always want the best for me, always support me or discourage me (depending on the situation ha ha), and whom I know I can count on – for anything and everything and for always.

My sister was my first friend. She was a toddler and I was an infant and there’s an old picture that I love of her “reading” to me as I lay swaddled on my mother’s bed. She played Barbies with me in our driveway. She walked with me to the corner candy store and to piano lessons. She (and, in all fairness, her friends) made me eat a worm; if I ate the worm then they would let me play with them. Yes, it’s funny now but not so much then. It tasted earthy. I did not tell on her because I worshiped her. She was an all-star softball player as I twirled my pigtails and picked clovers in right field. When I struck out at bat and started crying on the spot, it was my sister who came and put her arms around me and walked me out of the batter’s cage. When someone shattered a kitchen window and tried to break in to our house during the night (unsuccessful and uneventful, really), it was my sister who I ran to and hid with under the covers of her daisy-quilted twin bed. As we grew up, she introduced me to Stephen King novels and Saturday Night Live. She taught me to dive in the pool at our grandparents’ condo complex. (But not before she would practically “play” drown me. She was on the swim team, I was not. I lost – every time.) She introduced me to raw oysters and blue cheese dressing and gave me big-sister advice on boys and first jobs. She wouldn’t let me wear her clothes but she wore whatever she wanted of mine – without asking. It was her privilege as the big sister, she said. Sometimes I couldn’t stand her. But I missed her dearly when she went away to college and I even moved into her room for a bit, vacating my own tiny bedroom just a few feet away, and I couldn’t wait till she came home for a weekend visit. We bought our first house – together. We were 22 and 25, out of college and starting our careers, and she advised that if we put our money together, we could buy a nicer place than if we bought separately. So we did, and we moved into adulthood responsibilities together under the watchful eye and with the gifted furniture of our very proud mother.

With the birth of my younger brother, I had became a big sister and little mother. My mom said that because I was a preschooler at home with her during her pregnancy, I really thought that he was my baby. I remember when my first brother was brought home from the hospital. I was laughing and crying at the screened door as my mom and dad and grandparents pulled into the driveway, and I couldn’t wait to see him. I loved him so much before he was even born. He was a good little brother – funny, cute, feisty, bald, big blue eyes, dimples. My mom called him “ornery” with an amused twinkle in her eye. He was very good at playing the charm card, even as a toddler. He didn’t really have a choice, but he let me read to him, play house with him, dress him up like a girl, sit on him till he cried. As we grew up, I cheered him on at his baseball games, football games, basketball games. (All of my siblings inherited the athletic gene; clearly, I did not.) I ate the unfrosted chocolate cakes that he would bake after supper, and I listened to his KC and the Sunshine Band records with him. I watched him get away with a ton of things that my sister and I would have never been allowed to do. I admired his intelligence and go-get-’em attitude, and I enjoyed his sense of humor. I respected his work ethic. He woke up super early before high school started to go bake bagels at the bagel shop, went to school, then worked again after school. And I respected his play ethic. We lived where we had to cross a causeway to get home and one late night as I was crossing, I passed my brother and his girlfriend parked on the sandy shore, windows steamed up. Ew. I kept on going. He was the one who saved me when I came home one night way too late, without a house key and maybe a bit tipsy. I threw garden mulch at his upstairs bedroom window to wake him up so that he could quietly let me in. My brother taught me how to kill the engine and slowly and carefully coast into our noisy-crunchy, crushed-shell driveway so that our mother would not be awakened and then privy to and definitely disappointed in our late-night shenanigans. I proudly watched as my brother graduated from Florida State, and cheered him on as he built his career. I was the one whom he called to tell about a girl who was different than all the rest, whom he couldn’t live without. I told him to go get her. They’ll be married 20 years next month.

Our youngest brother was the sidekick of my first brother and an adorable real-life baby doll to my sister and me. My sister and I were the main best friends and tormentors of our little brothers. Our youngest brother was an outstanding athlete, a handsome kid, loving, friendly, smart. He was my game-playing partner. We’d play Scrabble, Backgammon, Life, Clue. Home from school together with strep throat, we’d watch The Price is Right and keep track of all of the prizes that we’d won over the game-show hour and then determine which of us was the ultimate Price is Right champion.He was my hospital roommate when we got our tonsils out at the same time. I helped him pick out a Valentine rose for his girlfriend when he was in fourth grade. Eventually, he caught up to me in size and we’d share the same Levi’s. We listened to Bryan Adams, Journey, and REO Speedwagon albums nonstop. I had my first job as a K Mart cashier, and he was into disassembling his Matchbox and Hotwheels cars, then repainting and reassembling them. He came with me to pick up my part-time paycheck and I let him talk me into buying him a fancy model car paint and brush carousel with every paint color in the rainbow. He said he’d pay me back. ha ha We worked on superb school projects and baked cookies together, sometimes pigging out on the rest of the raw dough because we got tired of baking it. ha ha (Mom didn’t know that.)

But, everything changed when our youngest brother was 12 and died after being hit by a car. My sister, brother and I know each other’s pain. We have the same pain. We walked the same path when, as teenagers, we said goodbye to our beloved little brother and somehow learned to go on without him. Fifteen years later, we walked the same path again as we watched our beloved mother die of pancreatic cancer. These are journeys that are intimate and private to us, and really only fully understood and felt by us. Since then, we’ve battled more cancer, heart issues, divorce, lost jobs – and we did it together, with the support of each other. We turn to each other first. That’s just the way it’s always been.

And this includes my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, who over the past 20 years has been on the journey with us – and we’ve been on her journey with her. To our mother, she was another beautiful daughter to love, and to my sister and me, she is our sister from another mother, her mother, who died of cancer just one year after our mother died. Same shoes.

 

This brings me back to National Siblings Day and the sense that nobody knows me or gets me as well as my siblings do. For as much pain as our shared life journey has given us, we’ve also shared a wonderful fill of joy. We know each other’s joy and it’s deep and it goes way back. We’ve celebrated each other’s accomplishments, we’ve excitedly advised each other on home purchases and helped each other out with the serious (negotiating) to the trivial but fun (which area rug to buy). When I gave birth to each of my sons, who was there? My

brother and sister and sister-in-law. These aunts and this uncle studied their newborn nephews for the first time with pure joy and awe – just like I did – and genuinely shared in my wonder. We spent Christmas and New Year’s together in London when my brother and sister-in-law transferred there with his job because we had never been apart during those holidays.  We have comfort in knowing that each of us has found our soulmates and that we’re all happy and secure, have contented lives. We know that we’re only a phone call away. No storm will ever have to be weathered alone, no success will ever go without communal celebration, and no disagreement will ever go unresolved. Because of the loss of our brother and mother, and because our father never wanted to be in the picture, the three of us are probably especially connected. Alongside our terrific spouses, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends – who have also lived our joys and pain with us, and whom we treasure dearly – we are happily living our lives.

 

 

We are the core created at infancy – the three of us. Siblings. We tread with care and gratefulness that we have each other. We have walked in the same shoes over the past 50ish years. We have each blazed our own paths, but the shoes are the same. National Siblings Day (real or not) was a valuable reminder to me that my roots, my past, my present, and my future are directly tied to my sister and my brother and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I am lucky.

 

What was lovely about today: Looking at old family photos was a refreshing trip down memory lane. It brought a flood of emotions back but I only let the joy in as I relived each photo in my mind. Those memories are what was lovely about today.