My sister and I are eleven months apart. I was born in the last week of December in 1961 and she was born in the first week of December of 1962. So while my mother was waiting on the arrival of her very fist baby during the Christmas of 1961, she never imagined that a year later she would have two. So it wasn’t just my first Christmas, it was our first Christmas.
Like any two children born this close we were best buddies growing up. My mother dressed us alike, just as if we were twins. But there were differences. I was a daddy’s girl and Trisha was a mama’s baby. She was more of a tomboy and I was a little more prissy. She wasn’t scared of much and I was scared of just about everything. We did enjoy each others company as young girls.
Then we began to mature. We started to get on each others nerves. I do have a vivid memory of sitting on top of her, with her arms penned under my knees, having hold of her hair and banging her head on the wooden floor. I don’t know what caused that, no memory of the argument. But my sister will tell you she remembers that and to this day she is just a little scared of me.
But the distance grew more as we got into the fourth or fifth grade. She had her friends and I had mine. And believe me the two groups of people had absolutely nothing in common. The biggest mistake my mother ever made was to allow us to have slumber parties on the same night. My dad worked nights, so my mother was alone and in charge of about twenty girls. I don’t remember that argument too vividly. I do remember our two groups lining up on both sides of the sidewalk in the back yard getting ready to rumble. My mom put a stop to it by threatening to take everyone home. Some how we made it through the night without killing anyone.
This distance between us continue until some time after we both graduated. She married and divorced, I married and divorce. Somehow we found our way back to each other. It wasn’t too hard. We had never had a fallen out or an argument for that matter. We had just gone our separate ways and lived our lives. I guess as you get older you tend to gravitate to those you have history with. I think that accounts for the multitude of classmates I have reconnected with from Carter Riverside.
So now we are best buddies again and have been for years. She accepts me with all my warts, faults, and all my idiosyncrasies and I accept her the same. We talk, we gossip, we bounce ideas off each other. We act silly and don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’ve both been through tough times and good times together. We cut each some slack. She bought me the red hat for my 50th birthday. We’ve talked for years about going back to wearing hats. So she just took the bull by the horns and bought me one. Yes its red. It has nothing to do with that red hat club. That will come in another 15 years or so. We will probably do that together. Knowing us we’ll start our own chapter.
With all that being said. She really is my best friend. I found the picture below while going through some old photos. Its a picture of my great grandmother and her sister. I see a bit of myself and my sister in this picture. I think this is what we’ll end up looking like to a certain degree. Sensible shoes and just lovely hats!
