Tuesday, September 18, 2012

My Sister

I love the way my only sister moves through her family.  In that special way she has. Confident, loving, funny. We are so different, she and I. But delight in the samenesses we uncover in each other. We are nearly fourteen years apart in age, she the youngest, I the eldest with four brothers in between us.  So we only discovered each other in adulthood. I had to wait a long time.

She has four adult children and a good solid marriage and one of those old houses that shoots out wings everywhere. I've said to her I could hide myself in here for a week and you wouldn't find me. 

She's more like our mother than I am. For instance, show her a piece of water, anywhere, and she will strip to her "togs" and dive in. Our mother would do that. I tell her this on our most favourite strand in the whole wide world when she emerges from a dive. She is delighted. She knew only a sickly mother. I knew one who sang in pubs and dived off piers and rocks at the drop of a hat and could embroider anything, anywhere.

We love to host and feed crowds in our houses. That we do well. We gloat in this commonality. We also sing a song together that we didn't know was each others' favourite until we performed it together in a pub one night. "Summertime".


She tells me she wasn't born with one bone of creativity in her body while I got it all. I tell her she has had a successful marriage and career along with raising four amazing children who love to come and hang about in the home she and her husband have created. A warm and welcoming place.

We all have our gifts. And sometimes we can overlook them. We need reminders of how absolutely bloody marvellous we are.

And darling sister, you are amazing.

15 comments:

  1. We have more in common than you realise. I also have four brothers and a sister who was at the tail-end of the family. Recent years have brought us closer together to share and enjoy our individual talents.

    Your tribute to your sister is a joy to read.

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  2. CC12:

    Thank you, my sister is extraordinarily kind and loving.

    XO
    WWW

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  3. GM:
    My soul sister you are indeed! I will never forget the night my sister was born. I just could not believe that there was finally another girl in the family. I was so overjoyed I could hardly speak.
    XO
    WWW

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  4. Lovely tribute, WWW - I hope she will see it!

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  5. That's good that you look for the samenesses and don't bother too much about the differences. And how curious that you both have the exact same favourite song.

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  6. T:
    I hope so too, she is not too techproficient (another diff) but occasionally checks in.
    XO
    WWW

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  7. Nick:
    We were both astonished. I was gone from home when she was 8 so no joint party singing.
    And not to have an Irish song!!!
    XO
    WWW

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  8. I agree. You do have an amazing sister. I bet she would say the same thing about you too!

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  9. Ramana:

    I wonder. We never really know what others think of us, do we. Unless we see it in writing or tossed off in a conversation where we are unseen.

    And often this isn't so good :(

    XO
    WWW

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  10. creating a lovely friendly welcoming home is plenty creative. I respect those people more than a lot of other creative types.

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  11. Sharyn:
    I agree, it takes enormous skill. And love.
    XO
    WWW

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  12. What a beautiful tribute. If only I could same the same about my sister. In truth, we are almost estranged, though for no more sinister reason than we simply have nothing to say to one another (and she is still into Dungeons and Dragons at the age of 40).

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