Well,

I’ve been wanting to share  and today is perfect.  The sun can’t decide and the clouds are low at the moment.  I’m in the garden and my sister told me it looks nice.  She was being kind and I’m pretty sure she wanted me to feel good
about my gardening skills and what’s happening back here. It’s pretty overgrown and I think if it was her garden it would look different. She, my sister, is a gardener extraordinaire. There are five of us, well three of us now that Nano and Papa are with Jesus, but there Were five of us, and I am the only one who wasn’t born with a green thumb. It’s been a bit hard on my self esteem to know that I am disappointingly inadequate when it comes to gardening.
Oh well
I’m very good at sitting and looking at the garden, whatever state it’s in at the moment.
So here I do sit and I’ve missed you all.
Before Nano left us I thought of telling and then I didn’t feel like it because, well, sometimes it seems that stories are a poor representation of the real thing, the hard copy, the flesh and blood
And then
my sister came and I remembered again.
It makes me laugh and my sister is gone, back to her own home and I wish her own home was closer to my home and we could talk eyeball to eyeball more often when I’m with her and she’s bossy like our mama was and then I think that I’m kind of bossy too and we both
she and me
are pretty much pretty similar to her, our mama.

So here’s what I wanted to tell you.

Make sure you do nice things

Because I’m bossy and we are both bossy and we, as they say these days
Own It
I think it’s acceptable to tell you and not just suggest that you Do Nice Things. Not always planned.  Sometimes random.  It’s actually fun and it will make you happy and it becomes sort of a bit selfish because in as much as it makes the receiver of the kindness happy, it makes the giver happy too.
win/win

So here’s the story. It’s kind of a few stories intertwined and I like the word intertwined because it makes me think of three or four things twisted nicely, beautifully together to create something bigger and stronger, helpful, beneficial, impactful.   I googled the word effective.

People have asked which one of us is older. Now, that shouldn’t be a big deal aside from the fact that she my sister, is more than eight years older than me. You can see how it might not  sit well with me it’s okay with her  that some folks think I’m the elder of the two.   She was eight going on nine when I was born and she efficiently took on the job of Big Sister. She let me use her doll buggy and showed me how to swaddle my Baby. She read me stories and when I got a bit older and she had stuff going on and I went to bed before she got home at night, sometimes she would come into my room when I was sleeping, pick me up and take me to her bed to sleep with her. Sometimes I would ask before she left for the evening if I could sleep with her and she would say I couldn’t and then, joy of joys I would wake up in the morning in her bed.
My first venture into the world of sleepovers.
From the start we were different.  Both of my siblings were the things I wasn’t.  My brother Never got into trouble.  He was the perfect child.  My sister was Almost perfect but not as perfect as our brother.  I ran around and talked non stop and disobeyed and got spanked yep and did things that got me into trouble
and they didn’t. My sister was careful and fairly quiet and listened and did what she was told
and I didn’t
She went away to Bible School when I was ten. I cried for a week.

We moved to Vancouver from the little village in Alberta, when I was twelve. My sister had already been away for three years by then she returned for Christmas and Summertime of course and she came back a year after that, to live with us again and I was pretty happy about it.
When I was twelve I started babysitting and did lots of it.
We lived in a little townhouse complex called Ceaderbrook Village and it was nestled off the main road, on the north shore, under the ski lift, a few kilometers from the church where Papa was pastor.
I’ve told you that Nano Did.
Nano Did, for all kinds of people at all kinds of times.
I’m one of the ones she Did for.
I have so many memories of those years. The years when I was 12, 13, 14…
Here’s one.
We had just moved to Vancouver and there was a family who wanted to take me to some sort of a church event. They had a girl just a bit younger than me and it was the perfect opportunity for me to make a new friend. Nano came home, from some sort of church meeting  and asked if I would like to go along with this family the very next night. Well me, the gal who has always been keen on meeting new people, was very keen indeed.
The family was going to pick me up the next evening. So what did Nano do? and I can remember it even now She made a statement, that’s what she did.
“I think it would be nice for you to have a new dress.”   Now as lovely as this was, it was not unusual.  Nano often made me a new dress or skirt or jumper.  For some reason though, this time stands out as being extra special.   She went to the store where you buy fabric and brought home the sweetest fabric of all.  It was mauve and checked and she made me a dress and we put pony tails in my hair and I went to the corner and the family picked me up and I got to be friends with their girl and we were Best friends for a lot of years after that and then 12 years after that first meeting I was her maid of honour and a month later she was my matron of honour.
That was a very nice thing Nano did for me and I think about it often.

Sometimes when I went to babysit, just down the stairs and along the sidewalk, I would get hungry. Sometimes it was 8:00 and sometimes it was 9:30 and my little charges were sound asleep in their beds. I would call Nano back when everybody had a phone either on the table or hanging on the wall and I’d ask if she might be able to bring me something to eat. She would put down whatever she was doing and make me a sandwich and walk down the stairs and along the sidewalk, open the door and hand me my snack so I wouldn’t be hungry.  She never sighed.  She never groaned.  She never told me I was spoiled and I could wait and have a bowl of bran when I got home. She just Did for me.
That was a very nice thing Nano did for me and I think about it often.

I should have counted but when you are 12, 13, 14, you don’t think about remembering nice things that people do for you, so I didn’t
count
but so many times my mama and then my mama and sister together, did nice things for me. Like the times when I would be babysitting and they would run to the store for something. I would come home from babysitting and there, on my bed, in the room I shared with my sister and that was the most fun thing because I was just an adolescent who was learning about life and she was all grown up and working and she liked sharing a room with me and we laughed and talked and she was 8 1/2 years older than me. would be a surprise
something. Not an expensive something, but there it sat and they had thought of me and one time it was a bag for carrying books and other things and it was one of those woven bags that we all liked back in 1972.
That was a very nice thing Nano and Sister did and I think about it often.

Jan and I did some reminiscing last week and we like to do that because
well, that’s just what we’re like.
I reminded her of the time she took me shopping and bought me my first pair of high waisted palazzo pants. I don’t even remember how to spell palazzo They were navy and she bought me a navy and white shirt to go with them and Nano and Papa didn’t have a lot of money and Nano made all of my dresses and that day,
That Day
was about the best day ever.  I was 13 and boy did I feel pretty stylish.
It was such a nice thing Jan did and I don’t think about it often but when I do
I am thankful and it makes me happy.
Then there was the time when our mama and Papa were away, likely visiting mama’s mother who lived far far away in Ontario.  My Nano was not well and even though our mom and dad had almost no extra money, they spent what they needed to spend to do the things God asked them to do. Caring for ailing parents and helping people who needed help were some of the things. Anyway, I was 13 and my sister was pretty popular. I don’t think I would be telling tales if I mentioned she was pretty popular with the boys.  Anyway, she was going to a dinner for Young Adults from some church. Yep and she brought me with her. It was the first time I ever ate tacos. I had dinner with the cool kids and it’s a memory deep down.

I learned
from those two
Nano
&
Jan
how to do nice things.
They did’t tell me I needed to do something nice in return. They didn’t tell me I was a silly girl and didn’t deserve anything even though lots of times that would have been accurate.
They just did nice things and I learned. As a matter of fact, there were Nice Things swirling all around back when. Papa, Nano, Jan, Rod, were nice people
and I saw and learned.  I learned that to Do isn’t always our first choice.  To Do is not always convenient.  To Do is always good.

No matter who we are, where we’ve come from or what kind of family we have or had, we can learn how to think of others
First.
We can do nice things.

My sister was here.
She came to visit and the last time we sat on the dock, Nano was sitting next to us and the last time we paddled the kayaks Nano was watching, either from a chair or from the cottage window. We talked about how much Nano would have loved to be there with us. We talked and
We didn’t cry last week, when we talked of Nano. We actually laughed about how she would have told me it was time to get my hair cut and we remembered how our mama was always in the kitchen when she wasn’t at the sewing machine or on the couch with her knitting, or in the garden weeding, or drinking tea with Papa, or visiting someone who needed a kindness.   When she came to visit, either of us, in our own homes, she stepped into the kitchen and got to work.  We did the things we needed to do with our children and she did the cooking.  She asked what we wanted for dinner.  We provided the groceries and she fed us.
She Did.
There were a few times last week when I looked over at my sister and said “oh, my goodness, gracious! That was mom. You sounded just like mom” and she did.
I’ll tell you the time we almost cried.
I almost cried.
When we talked about how we lived so far from our relatives. We never had cousins or aunts or uncles close.   We had to find some who weren’t blood, but were the next best thing.  God gave us the people we needed when we needed them.  He not only provided for our physical needs.  He provided people.  We learned to appreciate people.
Family is good and if there is heartbreak for us it is that there are so many we didn’t know. There is sadness that we, Three kids and our beloved parents lived far from each other after we were grown. When I was 14 my sister got married. she moved far away, to Ontario. I cried for a month.  That’s all I’ll say about it except that a few years later I got married and moved to Ontario. Unfortunately she and her family had moved to Alberta three years before that. Ships in the night.

The happy thing though, is how special it is when we see each other. The times we get together are dear times and we drink them in. She and I face~timed our brother and our sister in law one day when we were on the dock last week. They are three provinces away and We showed them around and we talked and it was a good time.

I am who I am and I do much of what I do because it was modeled for me. My sister didn’t Do those things, my mother didn’t Do those things, for praise or so they would get the proverbial pat on the back.
My mom and My sister Did because they knew
to Do is Good. It is kind.
They were kind
My sister is still kind.  She watered plants and washed dishes.  She changed her sheets and folded towels.  She chopped and stirred and laughed and talked and bossed and encouraged.  She listened and we are not so different now that we are grown and getting older.
She is my friend