Among all of the gifts God has ever given me, my family is undoubtedly the greatest gift of all. I cannot imagine what my life would be like without them, nor what kind of a person I would be had I not been lucky enough to have the two greatest parents in the world. I am one of six children with the same two parents who have been married for nearly 55 years. The older four of us were born within five years of each other. Then, there's a lapse of about a decade before another arrived, then another six before the baby made his rather surprising appearance.
I'm roughly in the middle and bear some of those characteristics attributed to the "middle child," including independence and self-sufficiency. My parents love all of us the same, recognizing that each of us possesses different talents and strengths but none more important than another. My Mom, in particular, has always tried to make sure every child was treated equally. But I used to chide her a little about suffering from the "middle-child syndrome" of getting less attention than my siblings. My older sister was the firstborn followed 15 months later by my older brother. I was born nearly three years later and my sister, a mere 11 months after me. The sister born 10 years later kind of bridged the gap between the first four of us and the baby, born 21 years after my sister. It was almost like having two different families and yet, we're remarkably close.
Mom tells me that my independent, carefree nature was a blessing for her. She says I never minded playing alone and when my older brother and sister decided to take away some toy I was playing with, I just picked up something else. No tears. No fits. No trantrums. My younger sister was just the opposite. While Mom was pregnant with her, my grandmother was fighting a losing battle with cancer. Just two days after my sister was born, my grandmother died. Mom, the baby of her family, had been exceptionally close to her mother and her pregnancy and post-partum hormones made a devastating loss even greater. Mom attributed my sister's frequent crying and fussiness to the sadness and stress she had passed into her womb. Although she says I accepted getting less attention in stride, I did assert myself from time to time, reminding her that I was there. To make life a little easier, Mom had weaned me off the bottle early and I had complied with few complaints. One day, she laid me down for a nap and laid my sister in the crib with her bottle. My sister soon started crying. Mom believed in letting babies cry for a bit, but when my sister wouldn't stop after a few minutes she went into the bedroom to check. She found me sitting behind the door, gleefully consuming the bottle of milk I had taken from my helpless sister. She could tell I hadn't done it out of spite or jealousy and felt a little bad for having taken the bottle away from me so soon. My older sister has always been the bossy one in our family, befitting a firstborn, but I have always been the bossy one of my younger sister.
Since my sister and I were only 11 months apart, Mom treated us a bit like twins. We wore the same dresses but in different colors (and sizes, of course, since I was nearly a year older). Most of the gifts we received at Christmas were the same but different colors. Mine were usually yellow, which was my favorite color, or blue. Despite our closeness in age, she and I were never as close as Mom had always thought we would be. One day, a few years ago, Mom asked me why. I knew the answer from my perspective. It wasn't because she'd dressed us alike or bought us the same gifts. It was because Mom made me include her in everything I did and made me wait to do things until my sister was old enough to do them too. For example, I wanted to go to 4-H summer camp with my best friend when I was nine which is the minimum age. Mom made me wait until the next year when my sister was old enough to go as well. (Unfortunately for my friend, her mom also made her wait. Sorry, Karla.) When I had a birthday party with a few of my friends, I had to include my sister in everything as well. You get the idea. Mom apologized for probably handling those things wrong. I told her that if that's the worst thing she did, she should forget about it. I love my little sister as I do all of my sibs. And maybe having to wait for someone else taught me life lessons I might not have otherwise learned.
Most of the time, we were a one-income family. Not surprisingly, Mom spent most of her time at home with kids rather than working elsewhere. As I've gotten older, I've certainly come to appreciate how fortunate we were to have a parent to come home to after school, and I recognize what a tough job parenting is, although I've never been one. In our case, I know having a stay-at-home Mom and a Dad who was an active part of our lives every single day made us kids better adults. Dad worked for the telephone company and was a member of a union. He made a good wage and, thank goodness for us, had good healthcare benefits. But with four young kids at home, his paychecks didn't go far.
I like to say that the older four of us kids didn't have much growing up and yet we had everything we ever needed. We always had food to eat although Pepsi and Pop-Tarts were once-a-week treats and we rarely ate out. The two youngest siblings have grown tired of the older four of us telling them that the only restaurant we ever went to was McDonald's a couple of times a year. There, Dad would get a cheeseburger, small fries and a drink. Mom would have a hamburger and a drink. Between the four of us kids, we'd have two hamburgers, one drink and maybe a french fry or two if Dad let us. It was all we could afford but to us, it was the ultimate treat. Frankly, the story's gotten old for all of us but not the lessons learned.
I wore a lot of clothing handed down to me by my older sister and even my brother, but we always got new shoes and a few new clothes at the beginning of the school year and again at Easter. On our birthday, we received one gift which we usually were allowed to open in the morning so we weren't distracted all day by the anticipation. After dinner that night, we always made a wish and blew out the candles on our favorite cake to the chorus of "Happy Birthday," then gobbled it down with the ice cream of the celebrant's choice.
Christmas held the most magic of all. For me, it smelled of cedar trees, plastic toys and candied orange slices. Dad would cut the best-looking cedar tree he could find on our farm and we would cover its sad appearance with strings of big colored lights, shiny glass balls, sparkling gold garland, glittering silver tinsel and tons of homemade ornaments created from styrofoam, Mason jar lids, cotton balls, sequins, ribbon, old Christmas cards, wooden ice cream sticks, pipe cleaners, paper clips and construction paper. We kids took turns every year placing the plastic, lighted angel on top. She still adorns my parents' Christmas tree, although she now sits comfortably atop an artificial tree instead of a prickly cedar.
We didn't have a fireplace in our old house so for years, Dad assembled a cardboard fireplace, complete with cardboard logs behind which he would place lights. We proudly hung our six stockings with thumbtacks knowing that on Christmas morning, they'd be filled with nuts, orange slices, hard candy, chocolate Santas, and this year's new toothbrush in the toe. Because the weight of them would topple our fireplace, on Christmas morning they'd be lined up against the back of the sofa in the same order as they were hung the night before. We'd sing Christmas carols and get to have a glass of Pepsi or hot chocolate topped with stacks of marshmallows as we decorated. The house glowed with warmth and laughter and a few minor skirmishes. Finally, we took turns reading "Twas The Night Before Christmas" from a big red book. Then, we would wait with great anticipation for Santa.
It is still a rule in my parents' house that no one can go look under the tree on Christmas morning until everyone is ready to go. There were three bedrooms in our old house, all connected with doors in between. There were two kids in each of the end rooms and Mom and Dad in the middle. When the first kid awoke, he/she would awaken the roommate, then go tip-toeing through the middle bedroom to the other kids' room where the four of us would marshal our forces and prepare for attack. We'd watch the alarm clock, all huddled together on the bed, whispering with wide eyes, anxiously awaiting the hour we'd been given before waking up my parents. Of course, they'd been awake since the first footfall but would pretend to be asleep when our foursome jumped into their room. We'd wait there while they went out to get the camera and plug in the tree lights. Upon their signal, we would race out to see what wonderful surprises awaited us.
We'd each get a couple of toys we'd asked for and at least one item of clothing and a pair of socks or mittens or something else practical. We'd usually each get a book, which we'd all later read, and a board game or two for all of us to share. Sometimes, Santa left something for the entire family like a badminton set or the electric toothbrush with one brush for each of us. There were those "big" years when Mom and Dad must have put every dime they could into the Christmas Club Account. Those were the years we each got new bikes or ice skates or sleds. Santa didn't wrap anything back then. He just placed everything into four stacks emerging from under the tree like spokes in a wheel with the shared gifts at the hub. Things weren't tagged. We always just knew what belonged to whom. Mom and Dad waited patiently, snapping pictures, sipping coffee and feigning surprise at our treasures, until the chaos slowed to the point where we all four had dumped the contents of our stockings and were starting to gorge ourselves on candy. Then, they would see what Santa had left them and open the homemade gifts we'd wrapped, expressing the obligatory ooohs and aaahs over painted clay ashtrays (neither one a smoker) and little handprints smooshed into plaster of paris. It was the most wonderful day of the year.
My Dad was raised on a farm and always wanted to make a living at it. But having a big family meant he had to be a part-time farmer while having a full-time paycheck-earning job. So, we lived on acreage in the country where we off and on had cattle, pigs and chickens, a Shetland pony we rarely rode, a few wonderful dogs and several I can't even remember, and a never-ending stream of cats. The timber, yard and pastures were our wonderland and we spent hours exploring it. We didn't have neighborhood kids to play with every day, just each other. We put doll clothes on cats and hats on dogs and held pet circuses. We hung sheets on the clotheslines and performed plays or waged imaginary war. We played softball in one square yard and climbed an old box elder tree in another. We made mud pies, played hide-and-seek and tended a huge farm in the dirt at the base of three big old trees. We built the farm together, each of us contributing our metal tractors and implements, plastic livestock, fences and barns, and sticks, stones, rusty nails and whatever else we could find.
We had a three-storey barn with stalls in the bottom, Dad's workshop in the middle and our playhouse in what we called, with complete and utter utility, "The Top of the Barn." We climbed up a tall, heavy, wooden extension ladder to enter. Inside, we had old chairs and couches, tables, bookshelves, dishes, even an ancient wooden ironing board, nestled under the slanted eaves of the roof. Parents didn't come there. It was all ours.
Outside, our favorite place was our campsite. Atop a plateau above a little creek we had carried large rocks to build a circle for campfires. On summer evenings, we would haul our sleeping bags, hot dogs and marshmallows to the site, then eat, sing, tell ghost stories, and sleep under the stars. In the morning, we'd fry bacon and eggs in an aluminum skillet and toast bread. Our camp toast was always a bit limp, but we ate like kings.
The last two kids in our family never had the privilege of knowing this magic place. Before my youngest sister was born, we had to move. A new highway was scheduled to run through the house. But we didn't go far. We built a new house on the other side of town on acreage with land Dad could row-crop. When I say that "we built" the house, I mean just that. We built it with our own hands, very slowly but with abundant pride.
For my two youngest siblings, it's the only home they've known. But for all six of us, it's the place from which we ventured out from under our parents' protective wings and into the world on our own. And no matter where in the world I end up, and no matter how spread out the six of us are, those memories will always be home.
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