Sisters

My sister Roberta and I, who are only 18 months apart in age, were lucky to have an older sister, Shirley, as we were growing up.

Shirley is 15 years old than I (and almost 13 years older than Roberta).

I've only recently begun to realize and appreciate the kind and thoughtful "second mother" she was to her two little sisters.

I didn't realize it was Shirley, not Santa or my parents, who brought me my beloved doll one Christmas, or my "ox blood red" shoes with zipper closure another Christmas. Once I was old enough to understand the truth about Santa, I assumed it was my parents who'd given me these gifts. Shirley's an extremely self-effacing person who would never brag to others about her motherly acts, so it was only recently that she confessed to me that she'd placed these gifts under our tree.

I met Shirley for lunch one day this past week. We don't get together often enough, and there's no excuse for it. We live only two hours apart, so it wouldn't hurt me to make more of an effort to see her more regularly.

As we sat down to eat at the Freeport restaurant, Shirley handed me one of her photo albums from the 1950's. She told me to go through it and take out any photos I wanted to take back home with me to scan.

I've been having fun looking at these photos and remembering the long-ago days of my childhood on a central Maine dairy farm.

Roberta and I liked to make "birds' nests" from newly-mown hay. Once our nests were nicely shaped, we'd climb into them and sit there. That was the extent of that particular game, I guess. I'm surprised that the itchy hay didn't drive us out of our nests, but I guess we were willing to sacrifice comfort for drama.

There were always baby animals of one description or another on our farm. Here's a photo of Roberta bottle-feeding a new lamb while I hold our puppy. I think the puppy might be our beloved dog Skippy, although Shirley's writing on the photo seems to say "Tippy." Maybe Skippy started off as Tippy.

My parents weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but they funded piano lessons for Roberta and me for two or three years. How we both hated going to Mrs. Barnaby's for those lessons! Mrs. Barnaby was a crabby old lady who heckled us if we didn't know our lessons well. Each of us would be reduced to tears before the lessons ended, which would prompt Mrs. Barnaby to bribe us with a glass of orange juice before Dad arrived to drive us back home. I think she was trying to make us forget her ill treatment so we wouldn't tattle on her. Our piano lessons came to naught, I'm now sorry to say. If only I'd been able to tolerate Mrs. Barnaby long enough to learn to master the keyboard.

As I looked at this photo of Roberta and me at the piano bench, I was reminded of all the clothes Mum used to sew for us. The blouses and skirts we're wearing here were undoubtedly made by her. Anything "store bought" was a real luxury to us. I see we're also wearing the dreaded brown long stockings. We detested wearing the things, because none of our classmates had to wear them each winter. The stockings bagged and sagged and had to be held up with garter belts. It was a joyful day for us when tights came along.

This final photo shows Shirley holding us. I'm on the left, Roberta's on the right. I think it's a great symbol of the love and care which Shirley gave us. We weren't neglected by our parents or our three brothers, of course, but it was fun having an older sister to look out for us as well. We were two lucky little girls.