A Few of Life's Surprises

Sometimes the passage of time and the expected natural order of events are at odds with one another.  Here's a story to illustrate what I mean by this.

I have three older siblings and the closest one in age to me is seven years older.  My brother and two sisters are spaced apart at two-year intervals.  Apparently the moon wasn't in Jupiter (or whatever it takes) two years after my second oldest sister was born and my arrival didn't occur according to plan.  "What a nice family," my mother surely thought as she gave away every piece of baby furniture, clothing, toys, etc.  Flash forward to seven years later and guess what?  Surprise!  Along came...me!

I am the only child who was born in the United States; the rest of my family was born in Canada.  My parents were busy building a house when I came along and, therefore, my oh so capable oldest sister took over my care some of the time.  Essentially, I grew up in a household full of adults.  My earliest recollections start around four years of age or so and already the sister closest to me in age was eleven.  I spent my childhood trying to catch up to them all.  Everyone in my family was (and still is) a voracious reader and I remember sitting in a chair with a book on my lap, seriously turning the pages--slowly.  It didn't matter that the book was probably upside down or backwards.  I was "reading".

When I was sent out the door to experience the first day of Kindergarten, my brother embarked upon his freshman year at college.  As I recall we all got along reasonably well and really enjoyed each other's company but I was "the baby" for a long time.  Not so much coddled; more of an annoyance.  "Mother!  Would you please get the baby out of here so we can play?"

The year 1964 was a very eventful one for us all.  My oldest sister got married in June, our house went on the market over the summer, I turned eleven, we drove across the country (my first time) to deliver my other sister to USC for her freshman year and we moved to a new place in the fall.  Whew!  I had finally gotten a little bit more interesting and everybody was gone except, of course, my very dear father and mother.  Very quickly we went from a family of six to a family of three.  My brother had finished his first four years of college and ended up with a degree in electrical engineering.  He then decided to go for another four in pursuit of a law degree.  Therefore, both he and my college-attending sister came home for the summer breaks from school.  My married sister didn't move too far away and came back to visit once a week and stay for dinner.  Summers were the best of times in those years.  The rest of the time I pretty much had my parents to myself which wasn't such a bad thing.

Now here's the curious aspect of the spacing of events.  There wasn't another wedding in our immediate family until mine ten years later.  My sister closest in age to me now lived and worked in Los Angeles.  She never particularly wanted a family and never got married.  My brother and his girlfriend were living together in San Francisco.  They all came back east to share my wedding day.  Apparently, my wedding was so inspiring and so much fun that my brother and his girlfriend decided that marriage wasn't such a bad idea after all.  They got married one year later. 

To be continued: