Kindness--and probably some federal decency rules--prohibits me from expressing some of the names I've called my sisters. Keep in mind I was young, and there was turf (and "borrowed" articles of clothing) to be fought over, so the taunts could be pretty cruel.
A male friend of mine once said, "I never try to figure out what goes on between sisters; I just stay out of it." Sisters are complicated, confusing, exasperating...and I, at least, wouldn't know what I'd do without them.
Here are some of my favorite sister teams throughout the ages: (no Hiltons or Olsens!)
The Brontes were inseparable (Charlotte was bossy)...
Margaret and Elizabeth--one was fun, the other dedicated.
The queen and her sister, like the Bronte Bunch, also inseparable...
But Olivia DeHavilland and Joan Fontaine--still not speaking after all these years. When Olivia was nine, she wrote out a will that said, "I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none."
A male friend of mine once said, "I never try to figure out what goes on between sisters; I just stay out of it." Sisters are complicated, confusing, exasperating...and I, at least, wouldn't know what I'd do without them.
Here are some of my favorite sister teams throughout the ages: (no Hiltons or Olsens!)
The Brontes were inseparable (Charlotte was bossy)...
Margaret and Elizabeth--one was fun, the other dedicated.
The queen and her sister, like the Bronte Bunch, also inseparable...
But Olivia DeHavilland and Joan Fontaine--still not speaking after all these years. When Olivia was nine, she wrote out a will that said, "I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none."
2 Comments:
I only have a stinky brother and longed for a sister. But then as I watched my friends and their sisters battle each other - sometimes even making me the prize (awkward and not at all flattering) - I realized it life is much more peaceful with really good girlfriends.
Mary C.
3:31 PM
LOL. Great post. I have six sisters and no brothers. I'm near the bottom of the pile, age-wise, but I'm close to various of my sisters along the line, and only ever really had all-out battles and disagreements with one.
It's funny, now, to think back on it all...watching the older ones navigate boyfriends, and "Dippety-Do" hair, and listening to "You're so Vain" by Carly Simon and other "albums" every day after they got home from school... and then experiencing much of that myself (minus the "Dippety-Do" thank goodness!), without them there, as they'd already gone on to college, jobs, and in some cases marriage.
I wouldn't trade the whole, crazy time for anything though. And we were seven girls aged 1 - 14, in a three bedroom home (one of those bedrooms was my parent's room, naturally, so there were four of us in one of the "kids" bedrooms and three in the other)...and only one bathroom in the whole house.
It would have been bedlam, if not for my father's training as a former Marine. We had alotted times for showers and limited amounts of time on the phone - and we even "counted off" upon getting in and out of the van, to make sure no one was missing, LOL.
We also had no dishwasher back then, so we'd all be in the kitchen after supper, cleaning up. I got "putting away leftovers" duty most nights. But there was a family rule that if anyone dropped anything/broke a dish or glass during cleanup, she had to finish the job herself. One of my sisters as what we called a "loner" in this regard, and she actually liked to do the dishes herself, the way she saw fit, and so she'd regularly drop napkins or something like that to get the cleanup duty to herself, LOL.
Ah, sisters. There's nothing like them! :)
--MRM
7:36 PM
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