The Mountain Laurel
The Journal of Mountain Life

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from the
Heart of the Blue Ridge


There Ought To Be A Sisters Day

By Susan M. Thigpen © 1992

Issue: June, 1992

Throughout the year, we celebrate holidays for various relatives. There is a Mothers Day, Fathers Day and, in the last few years, Grandparents Day. They ought to add one more - Sisters Day.

My little sister was born three years and four months after I was. When we were children I must admit I didn't really appreciate her. In fact, I did some downright mean things to her - Everything from telling her she was adopted to convincing her she was growing a third eye. When Mother made me quit telling her she was adopted, I switched to telling her she was hatched out of an egg.

She used to have a routine of looking behind the bedroom door and checking under the bed every night after her bath. I was mean enough to see that she found something. I hid behind the door and jumped out at her.

We grew up sharing the same room and the same double bed. We had nightly fights about who was on whose side of the bed. We drew a line down the middle and dared the other to get over it or to hog the covers.

I don't know what made me do it. I didn't really plot against her, it was just that she was so sweet and innocent that I couldn't resist a perfect opportunity when I saw it to do something she wasn't expecting.

When I pushed her too far, she would pack a doll suitcase with doll clothes and go sit at the corner and wait for Daddy to come home. When Mother noticed I had gone too far, she would switch my legs with a fly swatter that hung on a nail behind the refrigerator for that special purpose.

We didn't fight all the time, not even every day. Now that we are grown, she laughs about the things I pulled on her even though once, when I pulled a stool out from under her, it resulted in a few stitches in her chin.

I don't know how, but we grew up to be totally different people from those two curly haired little girls. We have a strong sense of family and stick together through thick and thin. If there is anything one of us needs, the other doesn't even hesitate to offer all we can do to help. We have traded everything from baby-sitting to clothes and never cared who got the better deal.

My sister and I now live nearly a hundred miles apart, but we call and visit, and every once in a while I get a greeting card in the mail for no reason at all except that she thought about me when she read it.

In short, I have come to appreciate having a sister. I imagine many sisters out there reading this are chuckling and thinking of their own sister. I think of my childhood as normal, and think many other sisters grew up like this and became close.

To my sister Judy, I apologize for all the mean things I did to her as a child and am glad to have her for a friend now. I have felt this way for a long time, but never put it into words.

If you have a sister, send her a card, give her a call - let her know you appreciate her. You can make any day "Sisters Day."