Sadness and Memory

Although I don’t usually write about sad things here, I’m making an exception because something very sad has happened.

My sister passed away very unexpectedly on Friday night.

So today, to think happy thoughts about her and about good times gone by, I wanted to mark her passing by recalling a blog piece I wrote about our childhood, posted originally at literarychicks.

In memory of Middle Sister. . .

Three Sisters

From Michelle, Reminiscing in Rotterdam…

No, not the Checkhov kind of 3 sisters where all they seem to do is hang around trying to fill their empty days with meaning until they can finally return to Moscow, I’m talking about…

Me and my two sisters.

We were born 4 years apart and I am the eldest (and no, I am not telling you my age because then you will be able to work out their ages and they will hunt me down and torture me, LOL).

When Middle Sister was born, my parents were anxious that I didn’t feel left out so they bought me a scooter. When visiting the New Arrival, all our relatives and all my parents’ friends brought me a gift, too. “This is great,” thought 4-year-old me, avariciously praying that many more siblings, therefore gifts, would follow this one.

Years went by, not a new sibling in sight…

So when I finally learned that I was to have another baby sibling, I knew that this was good news. I was 8 by now, so it was about time for some more gifts. And Middle Sister wasn’t the least bit anxious about the Imminent New Arrival because, of course, I primed her all about the abundance of prezzies which would also arrive.

So when Baby Sister was born, my parents bought us dolls with miraculously growing hair.

Middle Sister and I absolutely loved these dolls and we spent hours playing with them. Miraculously, there was a winding mechanism in the doll that let you change the length of the doll’s hair by the, um, winding of a mechanism.

This was fine until Middle Sister and I (and remember that we were 4 and 8 ) decided that we were such marvelous hairdressers that we could easily create fabulous hair styles not by winding, but by the application of a pair of scissors.

We were so delighted with the results that we decided to treat ourselves to new hair styles, too. Unfortunately, Baby Sister didn’t have any hair at this point in her young life, so we couldn’t include her in the fun (but don’t worry – we did it all again years later).

(Needless to say our sainted mother wasn’t too delighted with our new hair styles and I’ve often wondered if, in some small way, it was at that point she decided that enough was enough…)

Michelle