SIBLINGS, OH YES, I had them-only one brother, but two sisters. Maybe we should have put all our growing up stories together; oh, what a book that would be! Maybe it is better this way with me the only one telling, so I can control what tales are told about my ungainly, sometimes dare-devilish, growing up years. Oh, how much I needed to learn. What ridiculous things I did. I guess it all went under the category of growing up. I went the usual routes of being so much smarter than my parents, to the realization that it was all the other way around. I went from feeling that all the other kids had everything and I had very little, to the slow understanding that really, I had everything. It took me awhile, but it finally dawned on me that fancy homes, beautiful clothes, and jazzy cars wasn't the end to all ends. I got smart and realized that having a family like mine, a loving home like mine, and caring siblings beat all the other things "forty ways for Sunday".

I was taught by my mother that I could do anything I wanted to do in life. My mother told it to me face to face, but my father was one of those who couldn't really give a compliment or counsel gracefully, so I heard indirectly what he had said. What a great challenge, growing up in northeast Nebraska in the twenties, with parents like mine. I wouldn't trade it for a winning lottery ticket. The trials, disappointments, challenges, and victories we endured made us grow and mature into good citizens. I wonder why it takes us so long, sometimes, to realize our blessings. It's like that old saying, "We get too soon old, and too late smart".

Now, in this year of 2001, 80 years after my beginning, I have only one of those siblings remaining. My sister who is seven years my junior is still there for me. She lives in California. She and I argued incessantly when we were younger, but over the last fifty years we have grown steadily and surely closer and dearer to each other. My brother, four years my senior, and I were very close also, but my sister and I have a special togetherness. Probably the greatest thing we share is our sense of humor; nothing heals like a good laugh at ourselves, or at something that we remember happening years ago. We even spend a little time trying to figure out what it was that we argued about years earlier; why did it make any difference? The sun still comes up every morning, no matter what. We send e-mails, and we call each other, sometimes over stupid little things, just so we can hear each other's voice. She is definitely one of those pearls on my string of memories.

When each of us married, it just happened that our husbands got along so well that I believe they thought they were brothers. They played cribbage game after game. When my sister and I got into one of our giggling stages, they exchanged those looks; like "we married loons". Whenever the four of us were together, it was a good time of discussions, laughs, remembering, and teasing. There wasn't anything we couldn't discuss between the four of us. I think my sister and I were brilliant to pick mates that made up such a fun-loving foursome.

Now in our senior years, both of us now alone, my sister and I chuckle over our "senior moments" when a word or a place escapes our memory and it drives us crazy trying to remember. Just last evening, my sister and I enjoyed two calls, great laughs, and mutual therapy over two words we couldn't bring up off the tip of our tongues. Was that a reason to call over 3000 miles? Oh, yes, it is an excellent reason to call. Our paralleling signs of aging help us to stay close. It's better than pills for depression, or cheaper than the psychiatrist's couch. Laughing at ourselves is good for heart and soul, for aging, and for remembering. One time as we were chatting, we couldn't remember the name of someone who was the object of our conversation. About five minutes after I hung up, the phone rang, and after I said "Hello", there were just two words said. She told me the name that had evaded us, then she laughed, we both laughed, and we hung up.

One cousin, Bill, is almost in the category of a sibling, as he lived just "down the road a piece" and spent a lot of time at our house. He was born just over four months after I so we played together a lot. When we were very young we made mud pies together, we played tag, hide and go seek, and handy-andy-over. We jumped rope, and drove the "Tee and wheel" around the farm. The Tee was a cross stick made from lath, and the wheel was the ring off of a wagon wheel. It's really too bad that modern kids haven't learned the skills to propel that wheel with that stick over the clods, up hills, down hills, and around a puddle. What a shame! We also played with inner tube guns. They were guns made from the ends of an orange crate, and rounds of inner tube. We had button and string toys, tops, and we learned all the skills of cat-in-the-cradle. We played cards( he always won), and we played checkers. Never in my life did I ever win a game of checkers when I played against him. I tried and tried, but he always beat me. So then he would concede to play one game of "Jump checkers" ( where the goal is actually to get jumped) and I always won that.

Bill had a bike which he cherished, and I was jealous of that. I didn't have a bike. I had a sled but summer wasn't a good time for the sled. So I gave him a bad time about riding his bike. He had received explicit instructions that he was not to allow anyone else to ride that bike. So, we had a disagreement or two about that two-wheeler. One day, I sneaked and rode his bike and after that, it was never seen at our house again. There it is, my confession! How long it took!

While at this age, we had the "traveling spoon game". This is a game we had made up, I guess, as it was very creative. He had a playhouse and I had a playhouse. He had in his play house a nice iced tea spoon to which I took a fancy. I really admired that spoon, it felt so nice in my hand and seemed like something really fancy. I guess I coveted that spoon. So I stole it, I stuffed it in my bloomers and carried it home. He would come to play in my playhouse, and strangely enough the spoon disappeared only to surface again in his playhouse. That traveling spoon! Now that we are both senior seniors, we chuckle about that beautiful old worn-out spoon. I wonder what finally happened to it. Maybe I should get a metal detector and revisit the old farm.

In teen years, we were both too busy to play much of anything. He was a very good baseball player, and after high school, went to service and won medals. We went our separate ways for awhile. Now he is back in the old home town of Coleridge with his wife, his sons and daughters-in-law, and wonderful accomplished grandchildren. He and his wife, Millie, stop each January to visit with me as they go to their winter retreat for a couple of months. It is good for the soul to remember, and to retrace some of the old paths; to compare notes on the people we once knew; and to chuckle about that famous traveling spoon.

My older sister Helen was ten years older than I, and had married and left home before I was in high school. She lived in the Coleridge community until her husband had to go to service at the age of 38 to do his part in WWII. After he returned from the Navy, Ed and Helen lived in California. She passed away at 51 years of age, and Ed lived on in Oakdale, California. We visited there several times. When my sister passed away, I was devastated that death had come to a sibling. My brother and I attended the services. That was, by the way, my first plane ride. That left some very lonely people, my brother-in-law,(no children), and my sister and her family. Helen had been closer to Esther at that time than I had been. My parents had been gone for many years. So, it seemed our family was shrinking.

My brother and his wife lived on the home place where I had grown up for many years while their two sons were growing up. My sister-in-law developed multiple sclerosis and was in poor health for many years. After she passed away, my brother was about as lonely as anyone can be and still keep breathing. After three years, he found Mary who became a helpmate, a great sister-in-law, and a companion. For nine years, they had a model relationship, complete with fishing trips, traveling, friends, and family get-togethers.. Then, my brother suffered a heart attack and Mary was alone. I was without my brother. The family shrunk again.

Maybe one of the most difficult deaths was when my nephew passed away. He was the youngest son of my brother, and the age of my daughter. Now, I felt like the family had begun to leave me one by one and here I stood out in left field nearly by myself. I tell myself that there might be a reason for it all, and somebody much more knowing than I knows all the whys and wherefores. It was good to see my other nephew, the only one left from my brother's family, when he and his wife came to visit me this year.

Even though the family is becoming smaller and smaller, my string of pearls is growing, as I cherish the many memories. The "knots" between the pearls are there to represent trials, tears, and tribulations, but the pearls remain shining for my grandchildren, and maybe someday, for their children. Pearls, like diamonds, are forever. Memories live on to nourish our souls and to add smiles to our wrinkled old faces. It is our job to separate those memories and accentuate the good ones and let the bad ones go by the wayside. Save only the pearls, and let your thoughts slide over the knots. As my mother always said, "We have to have a cloudy day to appreciate the sunny ones". Enjoy those silver linings.