Brothers and sisters, lend me your ears. Today’s topic is siblings.
Many of us grew up with siblings. Now that we’re older and “not exactly retired,” we may remain close to them or, alternatively, not speak to them at all.
I’m lucky. I have two sisters — Ruth and Nancy — and we all get along well despite being very different people. We like each other’s spouses, too.
However, we live in three different states, so getting together beyond weddings and other family events requires coordination and commitment. It’s easier than when we were working and had children living at home, but we still need to plan months in advance.
We’ve been doing this enthusiastically recently, notably with a series of “heritage trips” to the hometowns of our three spouses to see where and how they grew up.
We started several years ago with a group trip to Nepal to meet some of Champa’s family and learn about her birthplace, which I knew well but my sisters had never seen. That’s us and some other family members in the photo above at Kathmandu’s Durbar Square.
Last year we met in upstate New York to visit the town where my younger sister’s husband, Joel, grew up. The photo shows us at the Airbnb farm we rented, the former home of renowned children’s author Maurice Sendak.
This past week, we met up in Butler, Pennsylvania, the hometown of my older sister’s husband, Irv. It’s where Donald Trump was shot in the ear two years ago during a presidential campaign rally at the field shown above.
We spent a day there, learning how Butler was the birthplace of the Jeep and a major producer of railcars and other industrial products before declining along with much of the Rust Belt. We had lunch with one of Irv’s family friends, saw the schools he attended and visited the cemetery where some of his relatives are buried.
Then we shifted our focus to nearby Pittsburgh, where there was much more to see. We kept busy there visiting the Andy Warhol Museum (above), the National Aviary, the Duquesne Incline, the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens and other places, along with hanging out at our Airbnb in the Shadyside neighborhood.
The highlight was touring the University of Pittsburgh with our granddaughter, a student there. That’s Paula in the photo with us beside Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning.
Earlier, on our way to Pittsburgh, we visited her sister, Maya at West Chester University, above,. We also stopped en route at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, paying our respects at this field where the airplane crashed after passengers stormed the cockpit and prevented 9/11 hijackers from flying into the U.S. Capitol.
The six of us have also traveled elsewhere together, such as to Alaska and Argentina’s Patagonia, below.
Wait, you may wonder, didn’t my sisters and I ever fight when we were children? You bet we did, and we still know how to push each other’s buttons. Now that we’ve reached this stage of life, though, we better appreciate how fortunate we are to have each other, and our spouses, and to make time to spend together.
Even better, we no longer have to share a bathroom.
Top photo: Pittsburgh skyline, from the top station of the Duquesne Incline.
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