Happy Birthday Cityfarmer

Below, my journal entry from September 23, 2005 tells a sister snippet side of the story.
Cityfarmer's daughter spins a soothing Mother/Daughter version over at Parisiennefarmgirl.

I hope you have an awesome day and an even better year. Seems we could use a good 'ole country song right 'bout now, in our lives:
"God Bless The Empyt Nest"... "Sleeping Double In A Double Bed"... "Here's A Cell Phone, Call Someone You Get There"... "Independece Year"... "Two Of A Kind--Workin' On An Old House"...

I went to Hallmark today to buy my sister a birthday card. I came home with a cranberry candle. That aroma, if any, should send a surge of warm, sister memories flooding over my seawall of reality. Today, as I reflect on Joy’s birthday the early childhood memories are eluding me. I can do teen-age through young married sisters. I can do generalities, attitudes and personalities. I can remember playing with baby dolls, baby puppies, baby sister and brothers.

The sister escapades are up there floating around, haunting me.

This thought has crossed my mind; as little girls we had just enough to be content and an imagination so vivid we couldn’t help but become creative.

The privileges and perks of growing up the middle sister were many. There was always someone there to expound and implement genius ideas. When those genius ideas went south, there was always someone to blame. Joy was (and still is) the creative one. Almost every make believe, play house, outdoor/indoor game, and wash line tent, was born on the right side of her brain. Even blaring WLS while we cleaned, was her idea. She LIKED to clean, rearrange, create, sew, paint, cook, play the piano, decorate, and organize. Take all those talents and apply them to two little girls playing dolls, legos, sharing a bedroom, barbies, and the great outdoors and viola--that was our childhood.

On more than one occasion, when we had our Saturday list in front of us, she would cover for me when we would get the famous call up the stairwell, “How are you guys doing up there?”

I would get the deer in headlights look and Joy, with dust rag in hand, would yell back down, “ Almost done!” Long after she left for college, and I was engulfed in a page turner, I would use her words to stall off the Gestapo while finishing 2 or 3 more chapters.

On occasion, we would walk to town after school and the possibilities seemed endless:

Window shopping at Lynch’s 5 & 10 store, up the ramp to the tacky toy shelves in back. Woody’s Snack Shop with it’s wooden benches and thick greasy french fries to die for.

The library before it burned down. I especially loved the library.

And yet, most days we came home on the bus and with the parents busy farming, Joy and I could find a myriad of things to occupy our time. I just can’t remember what they were. But I knew the words bored and dull were not in our vocabulary. If nothing else, we would ransack the cupboards for some cookie dough ingredients that usually turned into...delicous.We were satisfied to live, play, work, and go to school, without computers and cell phones. In fact, the closest we ever got to a blackberry was the balsam prescribed by Dr. Forbes. We didn’t watch TV, well maybe The Price Is Right once in a while when we were home sick. And Miss America, religiously, every September. We didn’t have iPods, we had records and later, 8-tracks. We took piano lessons from Mrs. Smith at the funeral home. We didn’t take adventurous, exotic family vacations, but at the tender young ages of 15 & 17 we went to Winona Lake to a Youth For Christ convention....BY OURSELVES! Maybe I have selective memory but I do not remember arguing, fighting, tattling, or degrading one another, I’m serious. She almost always let me tag along with her and her friends. When she got her license we would “ride around” (that’s NW Indiana teenage girl language for ride around.) We would go to L.S.Ayres in Lafayette and hang out at the perfume counter or play in the dressing rooms, before grabbing the best fast food hamburger known to mankind at Burger Chef. Once we defied all sensible notions that our parents might worry about why we weren’t home, and stayed in town to catch Dawn Of The Living Dead and The Day The Earth Stood Still, at the drive-in. I do remember the trouble we got in at home...Joy took all the blame. Thanks for that and saving me from ever enjoying scary movies. Thanks for putting Velveeta on the Chef BOYARDEE pizza, hence my love for REAL cheese. Thank you for cleaning while I read. Thanks for all the genius ideas. Thanks for going first all the time and letting me learn from your mistakes. I hold you responsible for any creative juice cup I sip from today. Thank you for bringing joy into my life. And even though it is your birthday, I’m asking for the gift. Now that we’re all grown up and oh so much wiser...I have one request...I need you to share with me one more time: I want your take on those two little girls. I need specifics and stories to help me recall. I want to smell the aromas, giggle uncontrollably, and warmly recall the carefree sisterhood that will forever bind us together and always be fondly retold. I need to remember and I know that you do.

PS. I WANTED to put an updated picture of us at the wedding---but I don't have one---do you?