Celebrating National Sibling Day

 

by Sally Matheny
    


Siblings with an imagination!

     National Sibling Day is April 10.
How will you celebrate? No gifts necessary.
    
     May I suggest gathering around a fire pit, or calling on the phone, to swap childhood memories with one another?

     What do you think of when you think of your siblings?

     I have one sibling. She is my elder by ten months. We enjoy telling people we’re twins during a two-month span each year.  




    
     Growing up it was nice having a sister close to my age. We played everything together. Our favorite summer pastime was sitting in our dirt driveway making mud pies and ant hospitals.  I’ll let you use your imagination on that one. But, let me mention, we were kind to our half-smushed patients and served them sugar water as we tried to make them stay on their tiny, toilet paper beds.

     We enjoyed playing together. We loved board games and using our imaginations. Barbie doll episodes sometimes lasted for days, as we made houses out of books, and clothes out of scrap pieces of cloth. We also spent hours writing and illustrating stories, usually about talking dogs. Each of us had a suitcase filled with paper, pencils, and crayons. Her suitcase was black and mine was blue. After we finished a story, we would staple it into a booklet and let each other read it. Good times.



     Living with siblings isn’t always entertaining. Sometimes we fussed. She was a pincher and I was a biter. I should’ve given more thought to my choice of weapons. The evidence stacked against me, I received more discipline because teeth marks last longer than pinch marks.

     Sometimes siblings torture one another. My sister knew I hated to feel the texture of velvet.  Whenever a devilish mood struck, she’d chase me around the house, threatening to throw a velvet blanket on top of me. Occasionally, she captured me in it, and then my yelling drowned out her giggles. I still hate to touch velvet.

     Of course, I tormented my sister as well, but mine was not intentional. Apparently, my eyes stayed open when I walked in my sleep and that freaked her out quite a bit. So much so, she kept a big, red plastic ball bat beside her bed.  I learned quickly to deal with my own nightmares and not enter her room in the middle of the night. Even when I assured her I was fully awake, and just wanted to sleep with her because I had a bad dream, she would grab that bat and start yelling for me to get out.  I stopped trying to convince her the night she swapped out the plastic bat for a metal baton.
 

     

We defintely make life
interesting for our mom.

     Ah…the memories. We grew up and developed different interests. For a time we were separated by distance during our college years and early years of marriage.

     Thankfully, we live close to one another now. We minister to each other through prayer, conversation, and sharing an occasional meal together. Even our most serious conversations eventually end up with sisterly giggles. We joke about who is going to take care of who as we age, because we each are a handful already.  We daydream of one day living in a cottage together, our husbands out puttering in the garden, and we’ll be inside laughing and writing our stories, together again.  

 

     You never know about sharing a house with a sibling. I think it would work—if we kept one rule.
 

     No velvet blankets.

 

Sister Writers, Pam Martin and Sally Matheny

(Happy Sibling Day, Sister. I love you very much and I’m continually blessed by your precious life.)

Hey, readers, it’s your turn! Share with us a favorite memory about your siblings!