“Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.” This 1954 Irving Berlin song was sung by Rosemary Clooney in the movie White Christmas, and my sisters and I learned to sing it at an early age. And we are devoted, it’s not just a song lyric. I feel incredibly lucky to have my two sisters. As I write this, I have just returned from a weeklong family reunion, and am still basking in the glow of it. Apparently it is rare for extended families to get together for a week every year and all get along, but we have been doing it for at least 30 years. Certainly in childhood the three of us weren’t always so close, but as adults we have a very strong bond. Even though we live in three different parts of the country – New York, Colorado, and California – we keep in close touch by phone, email, and facebook, and see each other at least once a year, if not more often.

They were seven and five when I was born, both in elementary school already, and had a pretty good rhythm established between them. Being so much younger had some advantages when I was very little – they liked to teach me things, so I was reading and writing and counting when I was three or four – but it was sometimes frustrating as I got older, because I wanted to tag along with them and their friends. This was not that appealing to them when I was around 10 and they were 15 and 17. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t want me to be part of their group. I did get to entertain the boys who came over to pick them up for dates, since the customs of the time dictated that the girl was never supposed to be ready when the boy arrived at her house. As a result, I was pretty comfortable chatting with older boys, and I’m sure I had crushes on some of them.

We are all musical, and when we are together we are usually singing. Like Betsy and her brother, we all went to National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, but my first year was their last. They were in High School Division and I was in Junior, so we barely saw each other except when my parents came to visit, but at least I had two chaperones for the long flight from New Jersey to Michigan. I continued to go to NMC for two more years without them, but that first year was the best.

By the time I was in high school, they were both off at college, and both of them married during college, so I had the benefits of being an only child for those years. I was going to high school in another town about 20 minutes away, and my mother was always available to drive me to and from school, to classmates’ houses, to parties and dances, or whatever I needed. I think my sisters thought I was terribly spoiled, but they were only watching from afar as they started their own adult lives.

My oldest sister went to Radcliffe, and so I decided I wanted to go there too. I even requested to live in the same dorm she had lived in. (As an aside, the 10 years between when she started in 1962 and when I graduated in 1972 were times of such phenomenal change that when we compare our college experiences, it is as if we had been at different schools.) We only discovered recently that we took some of the same courses. In retrospect I realize that I should have asked her advice about courses, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. After college she went to law school, and that probably influenced my decision to become a lawyer as well. While she was at Georgetown Law School I lived with her and her husband for two summers, the first year working for the McCarthy for President campaign, and the second year for Planned Parenthood at their national headquarters. It was great to have the experience of being independent of my parents, and yet having my sister and brother-in-law to rely on if I needed them.

My middle sister went to a different college and had a different career path. She probably wasn’t as influential on me in those college and law school years, although I did take my first trip to Europe with her and her husband, during winter vacation of my sophomore year of college. However, her huge impact on me came in May of my last year of law school when she had a baby, the first baby in our family in 25 years (since me). I had never been at all interested in babies, and didn’t think I wanted to have any. But that fall, when the baby was 4 months old, they had a gap in their childcare arrangements, and I was unemployed and awaiting bar results, so I went to stay with them in Colorado to take care of my niece while they both went to work. I fell in love with that baby! I had never experienced anything like the intensity of emotion I felt for this little creature. I felt like a child who had seen someone else’s amazing new toy, and I wanted one too! It was because of my sister’s baby that I decided to have children, and I have told my kids many times that they owe their existence to their cousin!

Fast forward thirty-some years, and my middle sister invited me to go with her on a yoga retreat in Mexico led by her Colorado yoga teacher. We stayed together in a casita, did yoga twice a day, went to the beach, and had a fabulous time. It was the first time we had spent a significant amount of time alone together since we were kids, and it made us feel really connected to each other. We hope to do it again when our schedules allow. My oldest sister doesn’t do yoga, but we connect with her in other ways. Now that all of our kids are grown, there may be more opportunities for the three of us to do things together, and I am excited about that.

Our mother is 95 years old, so lately when the three of us talk it is often about her. A year ago we moved her from her own house to a continuing care community. It was so wonderful to be able to share the decision-making, and also the actual labor of the move, among the three of us. I could not imagine doing it alone. I know that whatever the future may bring, in any aspect of life, my two sisters will be there for me as reliable partners and trusted friends.

(Here we are with our mother again, just like in the top picture . . . only this time I am not sitting on her lap.)

“When someone says he’s God and tells you to kill somebody,” my brother counsels me, “don’t listen to him.”
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Rick was alone with our mother for almost 5 years. I was not welcome when I came along. I was a hairless creature. He thought girls should have hair, so I must be a boy, right? He called me “boop-de-boy” and tripped me as I learned to walk. But as I became more fun to play with, and a little less of a threat, he was kinder, in a way. The featured image is on my 3rd birthday. I looked up to my brother in every way and wanted to tag along on everything he did. I was a pest. We had a window seat in the den of our little house in Detroit, which we both liked to play on. I used it as theater for my dolls, he used it as a desk for drawing cartoons. When I was just a little girl of 3, he pushed me out of the way so he could draw. I was furious, tried unsuccessfully to push back against his much larger 8-year-old self, so I walked around behind and bit him where I could reach…in the behind! I had a temper.

But we had more and more in common as we grew older. We both loved to sing and are very musical. I am a good singer, he has perfect pitch and is a much better musician. We would stage musicals with the whole neighborhood in our backyard. We played games until the streetlights came on, running around on summer nights, the streets full of friends. I ached for him when he went away to overnight camp. He preceded me at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. His elementary school music teacher had recommended it. I loved to go visit and couldn’t wait until I could also attend, which I did, finally, in 1964. He was in High School Division by then, I only a lowly Junior and he didn’t want to be bothered by me, until I wound up in the infirmary with the flu (I threw up during Sunday morning services; I was infamous – the kid who threw up during The Lord’s Prayer). I missed seeing him in a leading role in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. He finally came to visit me.

June, 1964; my first day at camp

We moved to a near suburb of Detroit in 1963 and we were both miserable; smart, gawky misfits. He was half-way through high school, I was entering 6th grade which was the oldest grade in the elementary school. I had skipped part of 5th grade due to a complicated system in Detroit, so I was also the youngest in my class. He tried to fit in, I had almost no friends and the gulf between us at that age was huge. Our mother had a nervous break-down and took to her bed. An aunt came in to care for us. Rick did the best he could and in two years, he left for Brandeis. Our father hand-picked that school for him. I think back on the decision with some amazement. Brandeis (like my brother), was 18 years old at the time. Founded by Abram Sacher of St. Louis in the ashes of WWII, Abe had gone to Washington University with my dad’s oldest sister and knew the Sarason family well. Few people in the mid-West had heard of Brandeis in those days. It was a bold and successful choice.

Now I was alone with our increasingly fragile mother. I eagerly waited for Rick to return on vacation and we would sit up half the night to talk about her and us and “why us?”, and how to survive her (we both have survived her, by the way). I decided I didn’t want to follow in my brother’s footsteps and almost didn’t apply to Brandeis. A parent at our temple talked me out of that. I didn’t get into Yale (only the second year they took women and, though outstanding along many dimensions, my board scores were merely average) and I decided against Northwestern when I learned that the Greek system was a strong component of life on campus. I’d had enough of cliques already. So follow Rick to Brandeis I did, though he was already a year out by the time I got there.

Rick and I look nothing alike. He is tall and thin, I am tiny. We both are near-sighted, but I got contact lenses at 13, had to give them up when my eyes dried out more than 20 years ago. He started wearing them fairly late in life. Our coloring is entirely different. No one would take us as brother and sister. He majored in Economics at Brandeis; I, in Theatre Arts. He was Phi Beta Kappa. I was not. We both were magna cum lauda with honors; he was so highly recommended that he received an honor from the Economics Honors Society and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. But he had spent the semester, right after the 1967 war, studying in Israel. He sent home incredible letters. He decided he wanted to be a rabbi, so turned down the fellowship and continued his studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He went off to Israel for two years of study (the second year was spent at Hebrew University). Having not seen him in two years, I visited during the summer of 1972. I stayed in his (all male) dorm, which was rather hair-raising. No one believed we were related. Most students were gone by that time so I had my own room, but Rick had to guard the door when I used the shower or facilities and I think there is one guy who will never be the same, as he walked in on me while I shaved my legs in the sink!

Two years later, Rick was ordained and I was married. Rick continued his studies at Brown University where he received a PhD in Rabbinics. He taught there for a year, then went back to HUC in Cincinnati, where he has taught ever since. He met a wonderful woman there and they were married on his 35th birthday. They have two terrific sons. Rick is a mensch and a respected member of his community.

I worked for 11 years, also have two sons, retired when I was pregnant with the second and have done various types of volunteer work since, mostly in the arts. We don’t get to see each other nearly as often as we like, but we consider ourselves very close.

1982

There were games and water balloon fights. I think of scenes from The Music Man, when I remember those holiday picnics.
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