Though the curtain

With so many siblings we were always sharing rooms. As we grew and needed our own space, we found ways to be alone in a room with someone else in it.

My older sister at one point divided our room with blankets.

At night she would in part her wisdom on to me like some priest in a confessional booth. I would lay there and drift off to sleep as she talked. There never was any further discussion of the evening talks.

I just enjoyed the fact she was talking to me at all. She was a teenager, oozing, coolness...and I was...was....still am a goober.

She didn't know it, but, I was listening.

Not to the fluffy, I ate cheerios, dialogue, but to the deeper stuff. Like her advice on how to juggle boyfriends, which by the way, involved a wonderful description of a stove with 4 pots of water in various stages of boiling, so one was ready to bring to a boil when the current one had gotten cold.

There were many nights I fought sleep, hanging on her words. they were the only ones spoken to me (well in my direction at least) I had heard all day. Her voice and words were hypnotic and I fell asleep to them night after night.

She had been the family "speaker" since we were little. On camping trips, us kids fell asleep to her stories and lectures. My favorite was always when she would tell us how the Earth began.

"Tell us how the Earth began!" someone would ask her as we all wiggled around in our sleeping bags trying not to slid off the station wagon seats.

"Well. " She began. "It began billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions  and billions and billions and billions and billions  and billions and billions and billions and billions  and billions and billions and billions and billions  and billions and billions and billions and billions..."

on about the 30th "billions" we would all be a sleep.  So many failed attempts to finally stay awake until the story began were attempted over my childhood.

She's a living legend, a fountain of knowledge and a endless well of verbiage. She truly is a gifted individual. Gifted at what, we may never know because I never stay awake long enough to hear all of what she has to say...and no one who has ever interrogated her to try to get her to reveal her secrets has ever gotten past the 30th billions either.