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| Della, Carol and Sue at Christopher Wren Church at Westminster College |
I didn’t grow up with sisters, but adulthood brought me a bevy of sisters-in-law. In addition to the wives of my three brothers I also found myself related to my husband’s sister, Carol, and Della, the wife of my husband’s brother.
For a dozen years we shared babies and Christmases and reunion dinners. We decorated family graves together on “Remembrance Day.” We helped out when our husbands put in a “new bath” in the family farm house. We exchanged cards and presents and telephone calls.
But our marriages didn’t last as long as we’d vowed. Della and I became part of the divorce statistics. Carol eventually was widowed.
This week the three of us were sisters again. We gathered in Missouri at Carol’s house which hasn’t changed all that much in the thirty-some years since the divorces. It still echos with the memory of the booming voice of Carol’s late husband, Newt. And I can almost smell the shiny red cinnamon apples Aunt Opal always made for family dinners. Now the energetic little boy running around in superhero undies is the grandson of Carol’s middle child, Susan. So I bounce little Gabriel on my knee just the way I used to bounce Susan.
Carol, Della and I spent a day visiting graveyards. There are a few newer graves now and many of the old remembered names. We visited the Churchill Museum at Westminster College where the British prime minister gave his famous Iron Curtain speech. And we ate tables full of food, much of it prepared by Carol’s daughters and granddaughters.
We laughed and talked and recalled all those babies and Christmases and dirty dishes to wash. We may be exes, but we’re still sisters.