Both my mother and my father grew up in families consisting of two siblings—an older brother and younger sister. I’ve always wondered if that is part of why they were so compatible, although they each had an uneasy relationship with their sibling for much of their lives. I’ve written before about my mother and her older brother. This post is about my father and his younger sister.
I didn’t know a lot about my father’s childhood, but one family story that I heard frequently was about my father shooting his younger sister with a BB gun. The way I heard the story, she was still in diapers when it happened, though that would make my father (who was just 28 months older) only four or five years old. I cannot imagine giving a four-year-old a gun, even a BB gun. But then, I never lived in the rural Midwest in the late 1930s.
Anyway, as my father later told the story, his sister was sticking her white-covered bottom up in the air, and it was just too tempting a target. So he shot. Bull’s eye.
She cried, but no damage was done, except to her toddler’s pride.
Though if I had been his parent, I would have made sure his bottom hurt more than hers. But their mother, my grandmother, doted on her son, and I don’t think he got punished much as a kid. (Except by his grandparents, who made him toe the line, but those are other stories.)
The family moved from small-town Kansas to Pasadena, California, to Klamath Falls, Oregon. My dad loved the freedom he was allowed in Pasadena. I don’t know if my aunt—younger and a girl—got the same freedom to roam the entire Los Angeles area. My dad was not happy about the move to Klamath Falls. I don’t know what my aunt thought.
Just after my father graduated from high school, his family moved to Seattle, but he only lived at home part-time during his college years. My aunt finished high school in Seattle, got married, and my father and his sister never spent much time together after that. They didn’t have much in common, it seemed, and they went their separate ways in building families.
Their father died in 1975, and their mother in 1990. Still the brother and sister rarely communicated.
Until sometime after the turn of the century, maybe around the time my parents moved to Port Ludlow, Washington, in 2006. Long after both siblings had raised their children and retired from work, they became reacquainted. They didn’t meet often, but they emailed and phoned. “I’m closer to my sister now than I ever have been,” my father told me at the time.
She had health problems, but her death in January 2013 was sudden and unexpected. And as I have written, he died suddenly almost exactly two years later, in January 2015. But I’ve been glad the two siblings found each other in the last years of their lives.
I wonder if my dad ever apologized for shooting his sister.
What family stories do you know about your parents growing up?
Very poignant. My dad grew up with a twin brother and a sister 4 years older. He and his sister never got along, probably because he could be a pain in the butt (and so could she) and his brother is more easy-going.
My father and his sister had a similar relationship to your dad’s. Dad’s mom was a first-generation Irish woman who had her own business in downtown KCMO and didn’t get married until she was 33 (unusual for those days). Two years later she had dad and two years after that had my aunt Mary Kay. Grandma doted on dad and didn’t bond that well with his sister. My dad and his sister never lived too far from one another but we only visited her family rarely. His sister was a maid of honor at their wedding, but I don’t think dad was ever at any of his sister’s main life events (except her 80th birthday). She was married three times, never really happily. She is still living, in her 80s, very attractive and aging in place now. She is my godmother and I have developed a very good relationship with her over the last few years. When dad had his 80th birthday, and again when he died this past September, his sister was there. Because my aunt struggles a bit financially, I was surprised that dad did not leave her anything in his will because he did leave a nice gift to each of his thirteen children. Maybe he thought she was fine because she had a home and 4 kids who are all doing well (and in fact, her kids are helping to support her). Anyway, there was a lukewarm relationship there and a lack of understanding I think (I could feel that dad was critical of his sister’s marriages and of her falling away from the church). Our brothers and sisters are one of the greatest gifts our parents give us, but sometimes the gift comes from them with a little unevenness that never seems to right itself completely. I guess that is what heaven is for.
” Our brothers and sisters are one of the greatest gifts our parents give us, but sometimes the gift comes from them with a little unevenness that never seems to right itself completely. I guess that is what heaven is for.”
Rosie,
I love the way you ended this comment. I think it is so true–both the greatest gifts and the unevenness.
Thank you.
Theresa
Is the oldest picture I have ever seen of my mother. Is it possible for you to send that to me digitally?
Done!
I felt emotional as I read this entry, perhaps due to the fact that I was an only child until I was nearly twenty, when I FINALLY got a brother. We are close now, at least I HOPE we are, and it is a delight to spend time with him now. Fortunately, we live just an hour apart geographically. I pray that we never have emotional distance, as I treasure our relationship. My mom was number eleven of eleven from wonderful and old-world Finnish parents, and she adored all of her siblings. Now the only two remaining are my mom and her older sister. The passing of my aunts and uncles, who were so important in my childhood, has brought grief and sadness. I miss all of them (the ones I knew anyway).
Thanks for the comment. I have a much younger brother (though not twenty years), and he is a delight also.
Theresa