Counting My Blessings # 24: Sisterhood and Brotherhood

I am thankful for my two siblings. All of us will be together here at my house Wednesday and I can't wait to gather around the table and discuss the serious things of life: What holiday did the frig quit working? How many people in Dad's family came in that Winnebago? How many calories are there in a tiny square of Grandma Woolum's fudge?
We will have the opportunity to catch "untechie" Mom up on our blogs and sibling assignments, discuss the Wild Cards of Huckleberries Online, and navigate through the "all roads lead to Kellogg" game that will start with a blog comment from a guy that knew the guy that Dad worked with at the Sunshine Inn to showing Mom comments from our blogs from her former students at Silver King School.

My brother and I are only a year apart in age. Our sister is eight years younger than me. The relationship the three of us have had throughout the years of growing up has taken on many changes. We had the challenges of competing siblings, a younger sister that was not quite old enough yet to participate in some activities, a moody father, and a mother that taught school, kept us fed and clothed, and still had time to go back to college, be union president, and active in PTA. We all survived those years of growing up and moved into adulthood with hopes and high expectations. We have survived depression, divorce, the deaths of our father and grandmothers, a miscarriage, the passing of pets, periods of absence from each other, times of being alone, and lots of trips together. We have blogged together, given feedback on manuscripts of chapters and articles, kept up Dad's tradition of making Tom and Jerry's together, and laughed a lot.

In the last few years we have found ourselves reconnecting and realized we had much more in common than I realized. Silver Valley Girl moved to Kellogg so we have been able to see each other more. Raymond Pert has helped us understand many of his life struggles and triumphs through the words and images of his fine blog. I cherish the time I spend with these two whether it is lunch at Jack and Dan's in Spokane remembering how much Dad loved that place, or hiking through an ancient cedar grove with cameras in hand.

It has been a long time since we have sat at a Thanksgiving table together. Thursday I will count my blessings and two of them will be Raymond Pert and Silver Valley Girl. Check out my sidebar for links to their blogs.

"I don't believe an accident of birth makes
people sisters or brothers.
It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage.
Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition
people have to work at. " ~Maya Angelou