Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Tribute Tuesday #3 - Sisters

This is the third installment of weekly offerings here at Straight Up and Slightly Dirty called Tuesday Tributes. Please comment here and let me know if you'd like to participate next week by posting a tribute to one of the characters in your life.

Barb at Picture This At Last has a really nice double tribute.

Now here's mine:

An older sister helps one remain half child, half woman. ~Author Unknown

In the flickering recesses of my memory, back when I was an 8mm black and white four year old, I fell in love with my big sisters. Both of them, tall and movie-star glamorous, Channel #5 styled and sprayed, with smiling red lips, and high heels. They were nearly 20 years old when I came into their world, yet they graciously accepted me and took me with them to movies, and out for ice cream cones. What little girl wouldn’t feel special and lucky just to be around them?

We grew up separated by distance as well as age, so those early perceptions of my sisters never got the chance to ripen in the day to day details of tearful midnight talks or giggled whispers. They remained static icons of perfection, and became two pillars in the foundation of what I envisioned would someday be the grownup me.

One sisterly pillar, so traditional, so devoutly determined and scripturally secure in her one and only marriage with six children. She was always there with a sorghum sweetened “bless your heart” regardless if it was fabulous news or a heart wrenching failure. The second, standing just as staunchly, almost the antithesis of the other - a divorced career woman with an only child, headstrong and strong willed, with the audacity to rebel against the traditional. Her car, as she urgently whispered to me as I dressed for my wedding, was at the ready in the church parking lot, in case I decided to take her advice and flee the altar.

Though we are still twenty some years apart in age, we are much closer in life experience, but I must admit I still harbor a little hero-worship for these amazing women. Now though, those feelings are based on a very real respect for the lives they have led, the battles they have fought, and the impact that they as real people have had on me. In my sisters’ eyes, I will probably always be a black and white four year old, but that just gives me the freedom to fall in love with them all over again.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

awww!! i liked this!! makes me miss my sister, of course.

Jill said...

my hubby has a lil sis and we take her to movies every once in a while. she likes spending time with her big bro (he was in jr high before she was born) now he's a college grad been married a while and she's the one in jr high. fun times..

Mary Alice said...

Lovely. Sisterhood is a bond like no other.

Anonymous said...

Wonderfully written because so obviously sincere! I really enjoyed reading this. I am the middle of three sisters, each a year apart in age (no such thing as birth control in the early 50's), and to be honest we were not close as children nor as adults. However, in my early teens, my best friend Karen had an older sister in college who would take us to the drive-in-movies. She would let us run around and get into our friend's cars (which of course our parents would never permit). I haven't thought about Karen in a long time. I think I am going to look her up. Thanks for steering me down memory lane.