Toronto (October 26, 2007) -- This is a week of birthdays in our family.  Youngest sister turns 50 tomorrow; next sister turns 55 on Sunday.   Oldest boy turned 25 yesterday.  October was a busy month, slightly ahead of February, where two of us were born.  My foster sis was born in May and she and I will both turn 60 next year.

I have to admit that there were plenty of times as I was growing up that I wished I were an only child; and even after I grew up I always thought Little Orphan Annie didn't know how lucky she was.  But as I grew older, I began to realize that having lots of sisters was not some special curse God had sent to me because He thought I deserved a lesson of some kind. 

The easy lessons as it turned out were voiced best in a book called The Secret Garden, where a woman with 14 children says that although the world is round like an orange, the smart kiddie will soon realize that the whole orange does not belong to anybody, and if she doesn't learn to negotiate and to move quickly, all she will get is orange peelings.  Sharing a room with a sister who cannot be convinced to pick up her belongings even if you pile them all on her bed (she would just crawl under them to sleep) was frustrating, but it also taught me that there are limits to what you can get another person to do.  Another lesson I learned early was to figure out what I did well and volunteer to do that, rather than hang back hoping to be overlooked and getting some dirty job that was left over.

Five girls in a three bedroom house also learned that moving out of that house as soon as we were old enough or graduated from high school was Job One -- and that the sister who was itching to take over our space would make darned sure we did not boomerang back in.  Yes, we were welcome home during our university days, but our bed would be a folding cot in what used to be our bedroom.  So the thing to do was to prepare for the day when we'd be on our own, and count on it being a permanent arrangement.

Finally, having all those sisters meant that we learned first hand what rearing children was all about.  I brought up my youngest sister, although I was fourteen at the time, because Mama was working full time as soon as Sis started kindergarten.  I was the one who was responsible for seeing that the kids got home, changed into play clothes and put the school clothes away properly, had their snack and did their homework or chores.  (Okay, I was the one who had to keep an eye on the clock so that when "Where The Action Is!" was over, everybody jumped to her task and the fifteen minutes until Mama drove in would be used to best effect.)  I broke up the fights and quickly learned both the Mom Voice and the Mom Look, which later I found worked equally well on overly frisky boys and, when I started doing waitress work at weddings, on overly familiar men.

We also learned to pack very fast and get in the car and sit in our assigned space, because Daddy would come home at supper time on Thursday night and say "Pack the car, Clarice, we are going to ..." wherever he had heard there was a stock car race that weekend.  I can pack a suitcase for a three day weekend in about fifteen minutes flat.  I could probably evacuate my house with all my most precious possessions in just about that much time too.  Once I went to New Zealand for three weeks with one suitcase.  I know girls who cannot go to the mall with one suitcase.

Freshman year in college was when I discovered the value of growing up in a household filled with sisters.  My roommate had been brought up virtually as an only child -- her only sister was some 18 years older than she -- and she could not do anything for herself, from putting sheets on a bed to sharing her space with someone else.  She learned quickly, I do have to say that.  But my astonishment at someone who had reached the age of 18 without learning to make a hospital corner was probably a shock to her.

I brought up the boys when I was in my thirties and the younger women who were trying and failing to negotiate with their kids wondered why mine were so well behaved.  One asked me once how I "got" my son to wear a suit and tie to church.  I told her that I laid it out and told him to put it on.  That was the way Mama "got" us dressed in record time for school and church and anything else.  Having learned young a way that worked, I was not about to change it for any of the new fads that came and went with no good effect on the kids.  And my younger sisters pretty much agreed although a few of them tried the new ways first.  The most permissive sister resolved never to spank her children until the day her son ignored her and ran into the intersection ahead of her.  "Before I knew what I was doing," she said, "I had him back on the sidewalk and was whacking his behind!"  The whacking did him no harm; today he is an MBA with a wife and two children (and counting).

So to those who believe that in today's world children are a liability or an expensive hobby, and you can't afford mor than one, I urge you to reconsider.  Junior and Susie are not going to live in a world of One.  The sooner they learn that the whole orange does not belong to them, and the younger they are when they learn to compromise, to work as a team, and to understand that there are some things that won't change -- and they learn the Mom Voice -- the happier they, and you, will be.

Oh, and make them share bedrooms.  Not only is this a good way to promote family closeness, it is also a way to for one to keep an eye on the other one, and to make sure that neither of them cherish any idea of moving back in once they leave.

Children are a blessing.  Not only to you, but to the world.