The best thing I gave my kids was each other

                                 The most common thing I say to my children is "you all are lucky to have each other, I'm an only child and I...." fill in the rest of that sentence with any sort of sibling lamenting I am feeling at the moment. My children have probably started to block me out when they hear me start a sentence with those aforementioned words. Truth of the matter is, I am jealous. jealous that they have each other, and will (GOD willing) always have each other to lean on.
                                When I was a child , I would spend all my time alone. Reading, writing, hanging with grown ups, because that's all there was to do. Now, it definately helped me become a smart, independant person who is capable of entertaining myself( a skill none of my children seem to have mastered). But still every year when I blew out my birthday candles, I wished for a brother or sister. I couldn't understand why I didn't get one. All my friends had them, they hated and complained about them, but to me their lives looked like Nirvana.They had someone to sit in the backseat of the car with on family vacations, they had someone to complain about Mom and dad to, but most of all they had someone to learn from as their peer, not as an adult.  My family car trips were spent alone in the back seat singing Streisand songs(there were no Ipods then, you listened to whatever your parents wanted)and reading . I complained only in my mind about the unfairness of my parents, when they were unfair(which was quite often from 1982-1989).These activities have shaped who i am today, I do LOVE me some Streisand and I read voraciously. But the not having someone to talk to about my parents, most especially my mother is still hurtful today.
                                 The day my mother died, I was alone. There was no one to remember the first time I permed my hair and I looked like a french poodle for 4 months, no one to share the memories of decorating our house for Christmas, no one to commiserate with over the fact that my mother never let me have dance lessons, do girl scouts, etc...Yes, I do have a father but we all know the involvement of fathers isn't quite the same. he was working , making a living. he hardly shared in these memories, but a sibling would have. they would have been right there going through it all. To this day I lament not having someone to share my childhood with.
                                 So, 17 years ago when I married my husband I told him we would not be having just one child. He is one of four children, so his perspective on siblings is WAY different than mine. I told him I wanted children(plural) . he kind of looked at me funny and shrugged it off. It was too far in the future for him to worry about. As it turns out getting him to agree to more than one child was as easy as putting on some Victoria's Secret nighties and smiling, so I was lucky there:) So, three kids later, there wouldve been 4 but my husband took matters into the urologists hands soon after my third, we have a FAMILY. A good size, kinda crazy, but close knit FAMILY. The kids fight, sometimes knock down drag outs, but they always come around. They look for each other when they get up in the morning, they commiserate over having meatloaf AGAIN, they sit in the back seat of the van and play silly games(ok they used to, now they listen to their Ipods to drown out Streisand..What I am getting at is they have each other. Sometimes they dont like being near each other, but at least they will always have the option. An option I was not given, but I thank God I was able to give it to them.