Tomorrow is my sister’s birthday. I don’t get to see this particular sister very often but I do think about her on the regular. She is my youngest sibling, we are separated by several miles and five years. I feel close to her in a sisterly fashion – we hail from the same place. I wrote a bit about her just the other day – I thought I’d share the excerpt in honor of the day it’s written about.
Chapter two and a half
I’m pretty sure Mom didn’t miss the work or the worry of chasing after six little kids after my aunt moved into her own place but she sure missed those kids. Our little house was suddenly gigantic and empty. We needed another baby.
There seemed to be a generational divide between my youngest sister and the rest of us – we were part of Mom and Dad’s chapter two – my youngest sister was chapter two and a half.
I remember the day she was born, it’s one of my most vivid early memories.
My littlest sister was born at the end of August when I was five. I can’t remember who looked after us when Mom was in the hospital having the baby but I will never forget she missed my first day of kindergarten.
Kindergarten was held in a large room above the community hall – it had windows on all four walls and was stuffy and hot when they were closed. I remember getting a new box of crayons at Woolworths for my first day of school and Mom giving me an empty chocolate box to keep them in. The girl who sat at the table behind me had twice as many crayons, her mom had purchased the bigger box – double the colors double the fun. I broke all my crayons in half so I’d have as many as she did.
I’m pretty sure all the moms in Calgary had a subscription to Good Housekeeping in 1958. I’m also pretty sure the magazine published a recipe for peanut butter cookies that year. Every day of kindergarten we had a cookie break just before our bogus nap time and every day of kindergarten a different mom would supply the cookies. I still hate the smell of peanut butter cookies.
Every season The prairie brought surprises we kids had forgotten from the year before. Childhood days are much longer than adult days, it was easy to forget about buffalo beans and grasshoppers from fall to fall but the fall of 1958 is etched in my memory.
My sister came home from the hospital on a sunny September afternoon.
I don’t think anybody can recall day-to-day life, even from last week – it takes an event to create a memory. I’m not sure the event that makes this memory so vivid is the excitement of meeting our new baby for the very first time or the fact Mom was finally home. The image is crystal clear, the mottled face of my littlest sister peeking out of a soft white blanket and my mother’s beautiful smile as she introduced her to me.