Praying Lesson: Sister

I was adopted as by the time I was two. I had been in foster care and Friends Assoiciation handled my case then. I am fifty-seven now so you can see that been many moons ago. The Smiths, a childless couple, had another child in the home, one of my mother's niece's sons, whom she was raising, who is eleven years older than me. They brought me to their home and thus began a troublesome journey for me.
The praying lesson today is about sisters. I always wanted one and longed for someone older to talk to and learn from and imitate, and truth be told, idolize and for protection. I was a lonely child, a timid child, an abused child. I prayed for a sister and I even begged my adopted mother to get me one.
I made friends with twins, and wondered what it would have been like to have a lookalike, act-alike, talk-alike copy of myself. I still marvel at twins and am fascinated by them. In the small community in Fulton where I grew up in Richmond, Virginia there was quite a few of them. They were everywhere and I had no trouble telling them apart and never understood why no one else could.
I made friends with girls who had big sisters and little sisters and half sisters, and foster sisters, and adopted sisters and play sisters. But I had none. I would listen to squabbles and see fights over clothes and shoes and other things. I noticed how they watched over each other and protected each other and shared laughs.
I started to look for that in my friends. I mentally, emotionally appointed them as my 'sister'. But none wanted the role. They did not want it or need it. I got left out and left behind in many things.
When I finally went searching for my biological mother, and got my record, I was surprise to find I indeed had an older sister, a big sister. I was stunned. I was in my twenties, a long ways from that lost little lonely kid in the sixties. It was the seventies, when everyone was doing what they wanted to do and thumbing their noses and other parts at society's rules. I remember reading her name. Aurelia Frances. What a name. What would her nickname have been? What was she like, a tomboy, a prissy prima donna? A nerdy, goody two-shoes? Was she tall? Was she short? Was she moody or perky? Was she serious or boring? Was she caring? I wonder.
I read her birthdate, her father's name. I knew more about her than me. I still do not know my father's name.
I even found out she was in Petersburg, Virginia. I set out to get the goods on her. And I came away with a record and a childhood picture of her. Even her adopted parents name and the fact that they dropped Aurelia and let Frances stand on the record as her given name now. Later I would come to know she was given our grandmother's name. To me it was another blessing and honor I wished was mine.
My initial curiosity waned. My joy at having found out I had a sister all this time was stunted by time. The years gone, the childhood wonder gone, the time for growth and bonding all seemed to be gone now. I put it all away and continue my search for my mother, Helen.
When we finally came together, I found she was married and had four more children. Two girls and two boys. I had two more sisters. I now had two little sisters.  I had been begging, wishing, praying for sisters and now I have three I know about. I have no idea what my father been up to since me and since I don't know who he is, another praying lesson. I prayed I never slept with a brother. A real brother as in sibling.
But now I had two little sisters, we all grown women now, but you always have the status of birth order. Robin and Beverly. I thought, wow. It would have been something to have them tagging behind me or begging to go with me places. I would have been overprotective no doubt trying to keep all of life's ugly residue off them. Maybe that would not been good or helpful and they would not have learn what they needed to learn. I might have done more harm than good doing that, so in that a lesson emerges.
Even sisters need space to be themselves and to be the sister they want or need to be, not who I fantasized them to be. Not in the perfect world or in my world, but in God's.
Maybe Frances and I waa called to this. Maybe it was God's plan we be put up for adoption. Good or bad, the life we had, the life we have, started from birth. The longings for a sister was a lesson. Learning the need for family long before I had daughters of my own. I am glad my girls had each other.