A to Z Challenge -The Letter E - My Sister Elaine

I am participating in the “April Blogging From A to Z Challenge” for 2018.  Except for Sundays, but starting with Sunday April 1, I will be writing a post each day in April.  Working through the alphabet, by the end of the challenge I will have posted 26 writings.  

My Dear Sister Elaine

I am the oldest of 6 kids.  Closest in age to me is my sister, Elaine. We are 16 months apart.  She and I look different.  I’m not sure you would be able to tell that we are sisters.  She has big brown eyes, straight dark hair and freckles.  My eyes are almond shape, I have wavy white hair and no freckles.  

As the years quickly fly by, a lot of my childhood memories are slowly fading.  

I do know that as kids she and I always shared a space.  When we were toddlers, it was probably a bed.  I have vague recollections of the tiny attached row house we lived in at that time.  Although my memory of our room in that tiny house is vague, I have a sense that we must have clung together through the many stormy nights of our parent’s frequent loud battles. Our apartment had two bedrooms and until the time we finally moved from there, my brother had been born.  So all three of us shared a room.  

Our new house, though, had three bedrooms.  My brother had his own room and once again Elaine and I shared a bedroom.

I still find it fascinating that even though we were so close in age, and raised by the same parents, our personalities were different.  I was shy, she was not.  My side of the room was messy,  hers was neat. I have a theory that we each developed in our way to cope with being children of troubled parents.

I suppose it’s hard to escape conflict when two sisters have to try to make one half of a space their own.  

By the time we were pre-teens and on into our teenage years, the conflicts became more intense and happened on a regular basis. 

Anyway, I know sibling rivalry is typical.   Isn’t it a common running theme on most of those half hour  TV sit coms?

By the time we were in our very early twenties, we had each married.  Our weddings were four months apart.  She married first, I was her maid of honor.   She left immediately after her wedding and moved 3,000 miles away.  I often wonder if our young marriages were our escape from an unhappy life. 

We kept in touch through phone calls and letters.  She would come back “home” maybe every other year.  I visited her once or twice.

Although there were some memorable disagreements, this story is not about those. 

Elaine has had and continues to have a full life.   It would be an interesting read.  But this story is more about the bond of two sisters who held what seemed at times to be somewhat tenuous ties together.

About twenty years ago she moved back here.  We each have had many life changes over the years. 

Ross and I had Easter dinner with her and her husband yesterday.  

As we were sitting around afterwards, one of us in the middle of a story, both of us laughing and giggling, I realized what our true bond is.  We get each other.   We just do.