Siblings

A few weeks ago, Darby and I were hanging out with some people who work in his lab. One of the women, an international student from China, had seen some pictures of our family Christmas on Facebook and asked if I had a big family. I said, "Well, I have one sister and one brother, so not too big. What about you? Do you have siblings?" She said, "No . . . we have a one-child law." (At this point, I felt pretty bad and ignorant, but she didn't seem offended.) Then, she kind of sighed and said, "It must be so fun to have brothers and sisters."

And, it got me thinking, she's right. It is really fun to have siblings. Sometimes I take that for granted. (Disclaimer: I know there are many happy families with only one child. I'm not saying that siblings are necessary for happiness, just that it's easy to forget what a blessing it is if you do have siblings.) I've shared quite a few stories about my sister on this blog, but I haven't shared as much about my brother (part of the reason being that he's not quite as crazy as Hannah). To rectify this, I thought I'd share some of my favorite memories of the three of us together.

• When we were little, Hannah and I would play school, and Matt always wanted to play with us. We didn't think he played the right way, though, so we'd make him sit in the other room and be the principal. I still remember him yelling from the other room, "Hey, aren't some of the kids being bad?" And we'd just yell, "Nope!" and keep on playing. (That was kind of mean... I'm sorry, Matt!)
• We loved to play church, mainly so we could take "communion." We'd get Saltine crackers and break off little pieces and eat them, along with our grape juice.
• Hannah and I would dress up in my mom's wedding dress, and Matt would be the groom (one of the downsides of having only sisters).
• On Christmas Eve, we would all sleep in the same room. We weren't allowed to get up until 6 a.m., but usually one of us would wake up earlier too excited to go back to sleep. Whoever it was would wake the others up, and we would softly sing Christmas carols to pass the time until 6 a.m. (I recently shared this story with Darby, and he seemed to regret that he had married into our family. I think he's afraid I'll try to pass these traditions on to our children... he's right!)
• Hannah and Matt (or Mom and Dad) are going to have to help me out with this one. I have a vague recollection of listening to some Christian rap/hip-hop (seriously!) CD and singing along and jumping on and off the couch. Did this happen?

And, because he doesn't get enough press on this blog, here's a story involving only me and Matt. I think this incident happened when Matt was about 10 and I was about 14 (a fact that will be very embarrassing for me when you hear this story). I went out to get the mail while Matt was playing with a remote control car on the driveway. As I was walking back up the driveway with the mail, Matt thought it would be funny to chase me with the remote control car. Well, I got really scared and started screaming and running toward the house. I tried to open the door, but the knob didn't turn, so I just smashed my wrist against the door and fell to the floor crying, scattering the mail all over the garage. I went in the house sobbing, telling Mom (and maybe Dad) how Matt had terrorized me with his car. In the words of Andy Bernard: "That was an overreaction." We still laugh about that one.