by Emma Willey

Created on: January 06, 2011   Last Updated: January 09, 2011

Memoirs:  My Sister

When I decided too write about my sister, I first had to decide which one to write about because I had four sisters, all who have passed on.  Should I write to my younger sister May who I played dolls with and had the most fun with, or should I write about Ruth, who was next older than me?  I couldn’t write much about Rose, because she died at age 17 when I was 13 and I don’t remember too much about her except that she played the piano well.   My oldest sister Anna was enough older than me to be my mother so I didn’t really remember her as a sister. She was more like a second mother to me.

You guessed it.   I will write about May, my youngest sister.  We were pals all through grade school, did all the things little girls do to get in trouble as well as to enjoy ourselves playing with our dolls, making mud pies, and cutting a chunk out of a watermelon in the garden to see if it was ripe.   It was too green to eat so we turned the melon over so no one would find out we had cut it already.  We watched it spoil in the garden which taught us a lesson.  Cheating wasn’t the right thing to do.

May and I walked across the prairie in south Dakota to go to our one-room country school, and often we stopped along the way in the spring to taste the wild celery and onions.  Once we rolled down our long stocking and rolled up our long-handled underwear on the way home, even though Mama had told us we couldn’t do that yet until the weather got warmer.

May and I braved blizzards, bad enough we had to follow the fence to keep from getting lost on our way to and from school.  We also giggled with glee when Papa came after us with a sled pulled by two horses that had sleigh bells fastened to their harnesses.

May and I were always pals, stuck up for each other when the boys at school teased us or when someone didn’t teat us very well.  We always vouched for each other no matter what the problem. 

We pulled weeds in the garden, we milked lots of cow, we shocked grain and we served coffee and cookies to the threshers in the fall.  We even took some kittens to the creek to drown them when our oldest brother told us to do it, but before we got there, we removed the rock from the sack they were in, so they could swim out to safety.  And we stood right there till we saw the kittens safely on shore.

We ride hoses together and herded cows, brought them to the barn for milking, and took them back out to pasture.

May and I helped mama cook, can vegetables and make chokecherry and buffalo berry jams and jellies. We washed clothe in the old-fashioned washer with a wringer, and hung them out to dry on the clothesline.  We learned to cook on a wood stove and ironed with the old fashioned flat irons.

Even in high school, we stayed close to each other and didn’t part until I went to college and she had to wait another year for that.   We both married and had children, after which we spent many holidays’ together, switching recipes and stories about our children, and gave each other hints on how to raise them.

I have never had a better friend in my entire life than my sister May.  She has gone before e me, but she left me with many great memories that still sustain me in my elderly years. . 

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