Happy birthday to my siblings

Today is my siblings birthday, yes plural, they are twins. I can still remember the flurry of activity surrounding the birth, though I am sure that there are details that have been lost, as well as many I never knew about.

My stepmother went into labor on Sunday the 3rd, after attending a party the night before. Sometime that day I was shuttled across the street to stay with my friend Eileen, who lived on the fourth floor of a brownstone with her blind mother and father. Her mother's sister lived with her husband, and two children on the second floor; their mother on the ground floor - she always wore black as all the good Italian widows did in our neighborhood. I was there because my mother had left our household less than a month before, unexpectedly, and was living in California.

After spending the night, I readied for school at the neighbor's but realized I had forgotten my gym clothes (I hated gym) so I dashed across the street. I have no idea what made me enter the parental bedroom during this trip, perhaps I heard a sound, but I was stunned to find my mother in the bed. I have no recollection of asking her anything but I suspect I did and the response was probably that she came home for the birth. Confused I made my way to school.

Coming home there was no one home and I headed back to my friend's apartment. At some point my father called there, and I eagerly waited to hear if I had a brother or a sister. The response was "It's a them!". I had one of each, and once again that day I was stunned, surprised and unsure what to say next.

My recollections are a bit fuzzy but I think they came home when they were five days old. The image that has remained in my mind all these years remains true. Fran sitting in the rocker nursing my brother, my sister in the single crib (did I mention we were not expecting two babies?) wearing a light blue one piece sleeper looking so tiny, so breakable. Standing motionless in front of the crib Fran told me to pick her up. I reached up and into the crib a bit terrified and awkwardly scooped her into my skinny arms hardly breathing for fear of dropping her. She seemed so tiny, so soft, and I felt nothing but love for these tiny beings. That feeling has never changed.

The next time I saw my mother was in late January when she came home to us and we became a house of six for a time.

Sister Act

In many ways I have many sisters who are not biological. There are women in my life who are soulmate type sisters of varying degrees, history, etc. However in truth I have a biological sister, well half-sister (which is such an odd phrase, I mean she is a whole person and all that) in that we share the same father. She has a twin, my half-brother and they are close what with being twins, having a matching set of parents, being raised together all. Along with having different mothers, they are eleven years younger than I am, we lived in the same house when they were 0-1 years of age, and again when they were 5-6, so not much lived history.

As the eldest sibling I did take care them, learned to balance a baby on each hip rather early, and generally doted over them, thought they were the cutest things on earth. But I didn't really know them. In some ways I still don't, but in much the same vein I still love them, am devoted to them in my heart, and I would do anything I could to help them. However I doubt they would ever come to me in an emergency, I mean they have each other.

In my mid to late teens they were still very young and just saw me, I think, as an oddity. I didn't dress like their friends, right after graduating high school I left home, and I moved - a lot. To further add to their "who is she and how are we related??", I came out as a lesbian. Initially I think they tried to ignore this as much as possible. In fairness they were about 12 when I told them, and anyone's sexuality is an odd thing to cope with at that point. Mostly their response was silence, except to ask me to not do PDAs with my girlfriend when we were out together. A few years later it seemed that it was conveniently cool to have a lesbian sister, then it just was blase. Fine by me.

Over the years it is my sister and I who have more of a connection though when they were young I had been sure it was my brother and I who would get closer and stay that way. I have never had an argument with either sibling, a side benefit of largely having little to do with each other, I suppose. But neither do I have more than a handful of great memories of us together, which is a huge sadness some days for me.

Tonight I had dinner at my sister's new place (I never saw the last one though she lived there 11 years) that she shares with her beau, who I finally met. It was nice to finally see her in her space. It was a lovely evening of catching up, hearing about my brother's romantic woes (which sadden me), learning what is up with her mother, commiserating on our father's peccadilloes. It's nice to see her as she actually is, an adult woman dealing with a mature relationship, figuring out next steps. I have no illusions of us suddenly being in regular contact but it is a nice thing to be peers the last few years, and tonight was a good reminder of how family and friends can be one in the same, very different, or how friends become family, but somehow actual family tugs at our hearts in different ways no matter the time spent together.

Christmas Past

Exhausted, nervous and excited, I dozed on the first leg of my travels last Thursday from Dayton OH to White Plains, NY. The second leg I stayed awake, pondering any number of things - almost none that I can recall a week later. Except one.

I realized that thirty-three years ago I sat on a plane, possibly on the same date, for holiday travel. Everything was different that time, first off I was still a child. My stepmother and I were heading from New York City to Phoenix, Arizona. Fran, my stepmother had just birthed my siblings (a set of fraternal twins) about six weeks previously and we were taking them to meet Fran's favorite relatives (and some my favorite relatives as well), Aunt Thelma and Uncle Walter.

I have nothing but fond memories of these folks who treated me as family from first meeting. They had been living in upstate New York State, the Albany area maybe, before moving to warmer climes. Walter was still tall though I suspect he had lost a few inches over the decades, and came across as what I now see as a mid-western country folk kind of man. Aunt Thelma was a very proper but warm woman who had iron gray hair that I saw once undone from the braided bun of daily wear. Her hair was stunningly long and still lush. I tried so hard to copy her evening ritual of brushing her hair a hundred strokes after seeing her mane but at age eight I didn't have the follow through that was required for such things. Their upstate house had a lovely fireplace by which Thelma and I did jigsaw puzzles. Perhaps it was during this visit that Thelma gave me this lovely crochet hook set that had a handle and a number of different hooks sizes that one could screw into the handle. Now with what I know of the fiber arts it is more likely it was a tatting set as the hook sizes were quite tiny. Many years later I let go of that set and have regretted it every time I think of it. It would have been the only thing I had from that lovely woman. I remember eating strawberries at their house, and my mother discovering that she apparently was no longer allergic them, much to her delight.

Somewhere in a photo album that is probably still in a box somewhere in my new home is a photo of Fran and I, each holding a baby. As I recall you cannot really see my face because I am looking down at my sister. Well I think it was my sister as she was the smaller of the babies so it would have made sense to give me the lightweight babe to hold through the journey. I don't remember much of either flight except that I think it went well, meaning no screaming infants for the entire trip. There is another photo that I have from that trip, it is of me standing by Thelma and Walter's tree, which I am pretty sure was artificial, looking awkward. I know that had been trying to finish a a woven fabric green jumper to wear during the trip in my school sewing class in time to wear for this trip but I cannot remember if I did, or if it's what I am wearing in that photograph.

It was there that I ate red snapper for the first time and have loved it ever since. It was also there that I first saw Morgan Fairchild in Search for Tomorrow. I believe her character was in prison when I began watching. It may be the only soap on CBS I ever watched. I remember how it seemed so incongruous for it to be Christmas while it was warm, in a place with no snow and things blooming. Of course even with two moms with advanced degrees in English I didn't think of that word to describe what I was feeling back then.

I think I saw Thelma and Walter only one more time, about four or fives years later, in Brooklyn. Somewhere I have a contact sheet of photos I took with a few shots of Walter, but I fear none of Thelma. I know we went to Central Park, played with "the twins", as they were referred as forever - a habit I am trying to break, in the back yard of the house. Again my portfolio of work from those years is in a box somewhere and I have probably ditched the negatives in an attempt to declutter my life. The memories will always be there it's true, but sometimes a physical reminder is really nice to glance at, especially when it can trigger such warm, happy thoughts.

I hope everyone has had a lovely holiday and created sweet memories to recall randomly in the future.