Friday Writings #197: Sisters and brothers

 

 

Hello, dear Word Weavers 

Lately I've been re-acquainting myself with some word weavers from last century. 

I’m reading The Mitfords: Letters between six sisters – famous, intriguing sisters in their day, partly because of books some of them wrote (novels by Nancy; memoirs by Jessica and Diana) describing their unusual childhood and their personal involvement with historical figures and major events. If you don’t know of them, do look them up – and if you want to read their own stories, I recommend you start with The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, one of my favourite books. (After reading these selected letters – which I am only half way through – I now want to re-read The Pursuit of Love and its sequels, and then to go on to the memoirs, which I have never read.) 

It got me thinking about the nature of sibling relationships. 

I never had a birth sister; I had a brother four years younger than me. (The Mitford girls had one brother, whom they adored, and who seems to have been a very good brother to all his sisters, who was killed in The Second World War.) With our age gap, when we were growing up my brother and I were closest when he was in his early teens and I in my late teens, finding shared passions for both science fiction and jazz. As adults we have always got on well and can tell each other anything; but we have lived in different countries most of our lives, as he moved from Australia to New Zealand for his work when he was still in his twenties.

A cousin 18 months younger than me was very like a sister when we were little. Our mothers, birth sisters themselves, spent a lot of time together during the years of the Second World War when their husbands were away, which threw my cousin and me together a lot too, so we developed a kind of sibling relationship, lasting the rest of our lives, with all the loyalty and rivalry that can involve. (I've sometimes referred to her as my cousin-sister.)

When I was 15, fate gave me a step-sister 18 months older than me, with whom I bonded closely. We always introduced each other as sisters, not steps, and just smiled innocently if anyone remarked that we didn’t look much alike. She moved from country town to big city a year ahead of me, so took me under her wing when I arrived. Later, my sons and her daughter spent a lot of their childhood time together, as cousins.

And I have acquired a number of sisters-by-choice over the course of my life, and a couple of brothers: those friends who feel like family. 

My stepsister Merrie (left) and me in 1956. 

The exact date is uncertain, but it's summer,  

so I must have been newly 17, she 18.

(Optional) prompt: Tell me about your siblings … or the lack of them. Or about sisterhood or brotherhood in general.

Guidelines: 369 words or fewer (excluding title). New or old; poetry or prose; one post per person; link (below) to that post on your blog; read and comment on other people’s posts; leave us a comment here, too, if you’d like.

Next week, We will invite you to write poetry or prose from the point of view of October. Yes, your narrator or speaker is the tenth month of the year. We are so excited to read thoughts and feels scribbled by a month.