I was 2 1/2 years old when my younger sister was born and knew nothing about what was going on. During my mom's delivery of the baby, I went to stay with Granny who lived just up the road from us.
After the baby was born, they brought me back home, and I was very surprised to find this small unknown creature in bed with my mom. So, sitting there beside them I began to cry and told my mom, "I want to go back to Granny's house".
I didn't return to Granny's house, and eventually adjusted to this new creature who had joined out family. I learned, not just how to tolerate her, but also how to help her out. Since she had a limited vocabulary, I would often have to talk for her and to tell other family members what she wanted, like another cookie.
As a result of my talking for her, she was a little later in talking than I and my siblings had been. But she eventually learned to talk for herself, and we remained close throughout our childhood. We also had two cousins living nearby who were close to us in age. There were four of us. I was the oldest of the four, and my younger sister was the youngest, so there was always someone around to play with. Loneliness was not something I experienced very often. If no one else was around there was always little sister Ann to play with. There were times, however, when I just wanted to be alone.
One day when Ann and I were out playing in the woods beside our house, I decided I wanted to climb the tree beside the area in the woods where we were playing house. We had made us a little house there at the bottom of the tree.
The tree was a tulip poplar tree with limbs close together making it easy to climb. Even though I was small, hiking my foot up to the bottom limb was easy enough. We had climber this tree so often that the bottom limb was broken off leaving just enough room to place my barefoot. All the limbs up the tree were close enough together that I could reach them easily.
When I got to the top of the tree, I held on to the trunk as the wind blew the trunk back and forth.
I was holding on to the trunk and enjoying the thrill the tree was providing when I heard my little sister whining for me to come down.
I can still remember many years later, the thrill of the sway of that tree and my annoyance at my little sister whining.
I learned that day that I can be very close to people but still value my independence.
