(Grainy photo from around 1965, as the four of us gleefully surround my poor grandfather during a hospital visit. I’m second from left)
My daughter often comments that she’s glad she doesn’t have siblings. She has seen her friends’ responsibility for younger brothers and sisters all her life, she sees siblings fighting and needing to learn to share. She was spared all that, I guess, but I’ve always felt that she’s missing out. My siblings taught me everything – from reading and telling time to making fudge and riding an e-bike. They are my best friends.
I come from generations of siblings being good friends. My mom’s oldest brother was her biggest chum growing up on the farm. Story has it that when she wanted to ride the family’s motorcycle as a teen but couldn’t reach the ground because of her tiny frame, Uncle Jack would ride on the back for her and place his feet on the ground whenever they came to a stop. I remember he was a kind and gentle person, and that she was incredibly sad when he died at the young age of 44.
Dad had his own sibling friend. All three kids in his family were close, but it was his brother who he got into all kinds of shenanigans with growing up in Calgary’s iconic community of Ramsay. Whenever we go to the Ironwood now, I think of the two of them sitting in that very building when it was a movie theatre all those decades ago. Even when they got married, they were lucky to find close friendships among all four of them.
Uncle Jim and Auntie Helen were frequent visitors in our house growing up, and I loved it when they came round because there were always special snacks laid out. Plus, my aunt would take time to play whatever game us kids were engaged in. She would giggle learning to skip Double-Dutch or hoot while ricocheting balls down the hallway. She held our dolls like babies and admired whatever latest story we were telling her about.
As we got older, though, she came out with some doozies of a story herself, from when the four of them were chumming around as young adults. I believe it was before Mom and Dad were married, she recalled with great hilarity the time they got into a huge argument at a Halloween Costume Party. Mom was dressed as a devil and some guy came up to her and commented that he liked her costume. Mom apparently, although this seems incredibly out of character to me, took her devil tale in hand and circled it around saying, “Do you want a piece of tail?”
Truly, I would be hard pressed to believe she even knew what that phrase meant, but Dad sure did. They all had to leave the party and, as Uncle Jim drove away, Auntie Helen turned to look at where Mom and Dad were arguing in the backseat. Mom was bent over crying, with her face in her hands and her devil horns sticking straight out toward my aunt. They all came to laugh about that over the years and both couples had long, happy marriages. And they gave us great cousins, too, which is nearly as good as siblings!