A Little Sister

1. Check the temperature to find it's another cold morning here in Manitoba.
2. Check the cows
3. Check to see that the kids got home safe last night
4. Check my site meter
5. Check the calendar

I remember the day my pesky little sister was born. Easter Sunday, 1967. I was 4 years-old, my brother had just turned three. We lived in a little house on Trinity Church Road at the edge of Hamilton, Ontario. We had a black lab named Queenie, a big front yard with a line of trees that separated us from the neighbours. How my parents grew anything in that clay soil I'll never understand, but there were always potatoes, beans and tomatoes in the summertime.

Spring arrives much earlier around the Great Lakes than it does here. I remember our dad putting our coats but we barely needed them, and carrying our Easter candy, my brother and I followed him out to the car. Most of the snow was gone except where it had drifted along the treeline. The sun was shining and while the grass was still brown, we probably could have laid down on it without getting wet.

Dad drove a taupe coloured Ford. We climbed in and stood on the front seat as Dad drove us through the city to the hospital. I don't remember anything about the visit, or my new baby sister for that matter, but I do remember how hot the car was when we came back outside and that my chocolate easter bunny had melted into the dashboard. I think Dad said something along the lines of, "Jesus Christ," but it had nothing to do with Easter.

They named her Nancy. She and I were spaced about the right distance in age that growing up, we argued a lot. She was the little sister who scratched my records, wore my clothes, scribbled on the front of my notebook, peeked in my journal, tattled, and tried to follow me around. In our house the older kids had to share their Halloween candy evenly with the younger ones and when one of us got into trouble, we all got punished to some degree. I tried running a line of tape along the floor to separate the bedroom after seeing it cleverly done on a television show, but it didn't work very well since Nancy had the door on her side. I remember being mad at her most of the time, but I never remember her being mad at me.

When she was a teenager, Nancy changed the spelling of her name to Nance. Why she did it, I still don't know. I was married with a young son and living here on the farm when she got engaged and asked me to be her maid of honour. After that, like my mom, she had her girls one after the other. And the same as the day she was born, I remember clearly the phone call that came a few years back, when her girls were still just little. She was doing up her will. She asked if anything ever happened to her, if Mark and I would take the girls. "Nobody loves them more than you," she said.

I've been lucky enough to have the best of both worlds.

Nance's girls started visiting the farm when they were just little. As they got older, the stays extended from a weekend to a week - then when they were old enough - the entire summer. They have always considered this their second home. Nance's firstborn, Lace, is almost 20 and now lives in Winnipeg. The middle girl, Kassarah, 18, is asleep in our spare room downstairs. Hopefully I'll see Emma again this summer.

Happy Birthday Nance. You are a gift. You are always in my heart and only a two hour flight away.

See you on Friday.

A mother's sleep: As interrupted when they are teenagers as when they were babies.