Big Sisters are THE BOMB!

As the oldest child of the quartet of Hudspeth children, my God-given responsibility was always to make sure my younger siblings were well aware of the perils of this cruel world.  If I had to just scare the devil out of them while teaching them this valuable lesson, then so be it.  It was my job.  I was the Big Sister.  And, being the oldest child of the oldest child of the oldest child of the oldest child – yep, fourth generation elder child – I was darn good at it.

I took my obligations quite seriously.  Especially when it came to my little sister, Gail, who de-throned me as Baby of the Family after not quite two years of being in the family spotlight.  Of course, her reign also lasted only a couple of years before my brother, Andy, was born.  By the time Jeff came along three years after Andy, I had my hands full imparting all of my wisdom onto these children.

Growing up in a small town in the 1960's, we were pretty fearless.  But, we did watch a lot of television and I began to grow increasingly concerned with something we saw on the news every evening - the Vietnam War!  Like a lot of Americans of the day, we were terrified of THE BOMB. I was sure that one day Communists would come marching down Camille Street in my little town of Senatobia, MS and destroy the world with THE BOMB.  I lay awake at night thinking of all the hiding places in my house and in my neighborhood that I could jump in to when the dreaded day came.  The closet in the bathroom was my favorite hiding place.  And, if the Communists happen to come while we were playing out in the yard, my emergency bomb shelter was the ditch across the street behind Ricky’s house.  Everywhere I went – my grandmother’s house, my Girl Scout meetings, the Rexall Drug Store, Ben Franklin’s Five & Dime, Roy’s Café, the First Baptist Church – I would look around to figure out where I would hide if I ever ran into a Communist. 

I had never actually seen a Communist, mind you, but I had seen pictures of Hitler and Castro in my history book and I had watched the civil defense films at school that explained how we should “duck and cover” if THE BOMB was ever dropped over Mississippi.  I had seen the bomb shelters that dotted the countryside while riding beside my granddaddy, Pop, in his old black and white International pick-up truck. About the only time I ever saw my granddaddy with a serious face was when he talked about bad storms, bad cotton crops and the Communists.    Pop said everyone needed a bomb shelter and a storm house.  Besides, handsome Bobby Kennedy did not like the Communists and that was good enough for me.

During the summer of 1965, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and I became totally obsessed with the Cold War.  A news junkie from a young age, I clung on to the Huntley-Brinkley Report like most kids cling to their blankies. 

Every Wednesday that summer, my mother would pile us four kids into her Dodge Dart early in the morning and off we would go to spend the day with her sister and our cousins.  We loved going to see our Wages cousins because they lived in the country and had bikes and tire swings and all kinds of cool ditches to play in.  After a lunch of cream of tomato soup and cheese sandwiches, the sisters would shoofly us kids out the door so they could spend the afternoon rolling each other’s hair and watching their afternoon stories.  Only baby Jeff got to stay inside the cool house with our mom.

One really hot July day, all five of us cousins, ranging in age from eight down to four, dressed in our summer uniforms of cut-off blue jeans and t-shirts, were hanging from the massive limbs of the big old tree outside their home trying to see who could tell the tallest tales   With about 50 cents between us and plum out of lies to tell, we decided to walk to the old store about a mile from our cousins’ house to get a Coke to share.   Our dirty, little bare feet,  accustomed to  walking unharmed across the sharp rocks and gravel, had gone about a half a mile when I noticed a small crop duster in the distance getting ready to poison the cotton field alongside the road.  Instinctively, I went into military mode.

“Here come the Communists!”  I yelled.  “Hit the dirt!  Hit the dirt!  They are coming to get us.”  I had been in cotton fields with my granddaddy many times when we watched the crop dusters, so I knew what the plane was doing there.

My sister, brother and two girl cousins screamed and dove into the ditch beside the road.  The plane got closer and closer to the cotton field, right over our heads, only a few feet from the ground before lifting back up into the air.

“It’s tear gas!”  I yelled, as I coughed and sputtered and spit.  “We gotta get out of here!”

My little sister and brother were crying hysterically as I pulled them out of the dirt and pushed them toward our cousins who were running full speed down the gravel road toward home. Before we got very far, we heard the little plane coming back for a second round of chemicals.

“Here they come again!” I yelled.  “The communists are coming back and this time I think there are two planes!  Hit the ditch!  Don’t let them see you!”

All three cousins and two siblings dove toward the first ditch on the side of the road, everyone crying for their mommas; hiccuping, the red gravel dust turning to mud and running down their faces. 

Then it got even better.  We heard a chorus of voices above the roar of the airplane.  I stood up in the ditch, my head just barely peeping over the grassy top, and saw a Boy Scout troop, dressed in their uniforms, carrying a Boy Scout flag, marching down the road as if in a parade and singing at the top of their lungs.  

I crawled back into the ditch with the terrified little ones, their eyes as wide as Moon Pies, and whispered, “They have landed and they are coming for us.”

Before I could even pull my sister and brother out of the ditch, all four younger kids shot out of that grassy hole, running with their little feet flapping like ducks down that gravel road.

For about ten minutes, the sight of my siblings and cousins, running down the road, terrified of a bunch of boy scouts and a crop duster, was just plain hysterical.  Until, that is, I saw my little spitfire mother running towards me with her hair in rollers, in her petal pushers and flip flops, fly swatter in hand. Not only had I scarred my younger brother and sister for life, I had interrupted “As the World Turns.”  I had rather have seen Hitler himself charging toward me with THE BOMB in hand than to have my mother after me with that fly swatter.  

Needless to say, I never again scared Gail or Andy with my war stories. I did learn to take better care of my siblings and to lead more by example rather than with fear tactics.  Of course, I never stopped teasing them or pulling practical jokes from time to time.  I was, after all, always the Big Sister.  Both Gail and Andy died before the age of 40 from heart disease.  Of the Hudspeth Four, only my baby brother, Jeff, and I remain.  The oldest child and the youngest child, like two bookends on a shelf with no books.

My memories of growing up with stair-step siblings are fragile and precious.  I want to remember every single day of our childhood.  By today’s standards I guess I would be labeled a bully – bossy, headstrong, demanding and sometimes just plain mean to my brothers and sister.  But, I was also very protective of them.  I could mess with my sister, but, by golly, nobody else could.  All three of the younger ones – Gail, Andy and Jeff - turned out to be amazing, emotionally grounded, secure adults – brave and strong - with equally wonderful and caring children of their own. 

As their big sis, I would like to think that I had a little something to do with that.

A Tattoo of the Heart

When I was in the fourth grade, I got a tattoo – compliments of my little sister, Gail.

This is not Mickey Mouse on my ankle peeping out of the top of my sock or Cinderella dancing gracefully across my plump little thigh.  It is not a romantic little heart or a pretty pink rose.  My tattoo is the lead point of a No. 2 pencil jammed right into my forearm.   Over the years, the mark has gradually faded from a perfectly round black circle underneath my skin to a nice, gray, weathered look.  Matches my nice, weathered skin very well.

My sister branded me a bully very early on, after experiencing many frustrating episodes at the hands of her big sister.  Most days, I got away with my antics pretty easily.  This particular day, she just plain got lucky.

As a first grader, my sister was very small for her age.  As a fourth grader, I was huge.  She was fair, blond, and quiet with eyes the color of a creamy caramel candy.  I was dark, brunette, and loud with eyes the color of a stick of licorice. We were from the same batch, but we were very different cookies.

“Gail has a boyfriend,” I whispered to my mother one fall morning in 1966 as she pulled our 1964 Dodge Dart over to the curb to let us out at Senatobia Elementary School in our small hometown in Mississippi. 

“I do not!”  Gail cried.  “I hate boys!”

Ah, I got her!  I started singing the song I had written in my evil little mind the night before as Gail lay snoring lightly in the bed next to me in the room that we shared. When kids don’t have Wii’s or PlayStations or Nick at Night, they have very creative minds.  I was forever coming up creative and extravagant schemes to aggravate my siblings.

 “Johnny and Gail were lovers!  Johnny told Gail not to cry, his love for her would never die!” I sang at the top of my voice.

My plan was to sing that little ditty as loudly as possible and then made a run for it.  I would jump out of the car and off I’d go, laughing, leaving my sister behind to huff and puff her way into the elementary school.  I had practiced it in my head the night before.

Little did I know that she had asked my mother to sharpen her pencil that morning, right before we left the house.   We always packed our book satchels the night before and left them by the back door. With three children and one on the way, my mother was as organized as the Dewey Decimal System in making sure homework was done; school clothes were laid out the night before; school supplies packed and ready to go at 7:30 the next morning.  My mom sharpened our pencils with a kitchen knife, much like her father had whittled small pieces of wood with his pocket knife.  Gail had not had time to put her pencil in her pencil case.  So, she was armed and ready when the enemy – that would be me – attacked.

As the first born, riding shotgun was my birthright, so I had my arm on the back of the front seat as I leaned back to allow my little sister a full view of my tonsils as I belted out the malicious tune.

I heard the back door open before I ever felt the burning sting of the sword.  I saw my sister’s white cotton sweater with the Peter Pan collar dash past my window before I saw the pink eraser of her yellow pencil pointing up from my arm. 

My delightful little tune turned into indignant outrage as I realized that she had stabbed me with her freshly sharpened pencil and left it stuck in my arm. 

Our little brother, Andy, who had been sitting peacefully in the backseat waiting for his two big sisters to get out of the car, started crying.  I was screaming, my mama was trying to figure out how to take the pencil out of my arm and my sister, who usually tagged along behind me into school, was running as fast as her little legs could take her into the safety of Miss Crenshaw’s classroom.

Mama, always the comic, looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, “Gail forgot her pencil again.”

Years later when Gail and I, along with our own families, were on vacation in the Smokey Mountains, we sat around the kitchen table of the little cabin for hours and laughed about all the mean things we did to each other as kids.  When we were in our 20’s and early 30’s, both of us were so busy with our lives – she raising a family and I with my career – that we lost some of that “sister connection” that is so special between sisters.  Like two different flowers from the same bouquet, sisters share life-long memories that glue them together no matter how many miles or how much time separates them. Memories, like the strong threads holding together a patchwork quilt, weaved our lives together forever.  Memories of growing up conspirators against our parents, of dealing with little brothers, sharing everything and taking care of each other.  Of counting on, leaning on and telling on each other.  As siblings, we fought relentlessly, but we also took care of each other.  We were bitter enemies and the closest of allies.  I always found the first Easter egg, but I never found my second one until she found her first.   I don’t have a single childhood memory that does not include her. Sisters keep you honest because they, above all others, know your real story.

In a small cabin on the side of a mountain in Gatlinburg, TN in the summer of 1998, with children running everywhere and husbands napping on the sofas, we remembered how much we loved each other.   We left that vacation with promises that we would speak at least weekly and we did.  That was the first time we our families had ever vacationed together and we decided that we would do it again the next summer.  We never again got the chance.

My sister died unexpectedly in the fall of that year. I now know that God gave me a blessed opportunity that summer when I was able to spend that week with my sister. I have missed her every single day since then.  And, though I do not get to talk to her any more, I see her in her two children, who are now amazing young adults.  In her granddaughter, who, uncannily, was born eight years later on November 11, the anniversary of her death.  I see her in my mother’s eyes when she reflects back over the best days of her life, when all four of her children were at home, safe and sound.  I see her in my dreams, where she is always laughing.  And, yes, I see her when I look down at my arm and see the small dark tattoo of revenge that she left me.

It makes me smile every time.