Surrounded by weddings

I have two older brothers. One is 3 years older and one is 8 years older than me. They didn't have much to do with me. The middle sibling and I butted heads a lot and, let's face it, our older brother was just too old to play games with me. ;) We lived on a gravel road with 11 other houses. They were big lots of land and there was only one other girl on the road who was my age, but she went to a private school so I was lacking in playmates.

I was also the youngest cousin on my father's side and the girl cousins were all older than me, not that I saw them enough to really matter. A couple times a year. My mother was an only child so there were no cousins on her side of the family for me but her father re-married and they had a little girl, Patti, just a year younger than me, who was also an only child.

Patti and I were inseparable when we got together. I think we were both the sister the other didn't have. Though she had two half-sisters (one being my mother), they were grown and out of the house. I remember being hardly able to contain myself on the 2 hour drive to her house. I remember being in trouble for jumping on the bed. We spent many hours walking in the woods and swimming in the pool and fishing and chasing the cats and dogs around. We snuck into the kitchen to get extra desserts at Thanksgiving and Christmas and spent hours upon hours playing with her huge collection of Barbies (of which I was so jealous), though our favorite game was, "House". In this game, she was always 3 and I was the older wiser sister. ;) When we got too old for Barbies, we started singing and lip syncing and making dance routines. My grandpa (her father) used to have the biggest house parties. There would be gobs and gobs of people around. I liked the chatter of all those people around...and they were great insulation for masking the sounds of the bed springs as we jumped. ;)

We're both older and don't see each other very often at all anymore. But I think of her fondly and I'm so glad she was there for me as such a good friend growing up. So today, when I got her e-mail that she eloped, I'm drawn back to thinking about what a great time we had together as kids...and I wish her all the happiness in the world. Congratulations, Patti!