Once there were two sisters, who grew up together in a large house near New York City. After World War II, they both attended college, one becoming a teacher, the other, an artist. The teacher married another teacher, named Joe, and stayed in Buffalo; the artist met a different man named Joe, and those two went to California to paint and seek their fortunes. Years passed, and the two sisters kept in touch, even though they rarely saw each other. Each sister had three children, who had never met each other, though they heard about each other in Christmas cards every year, and through stories their Grandmother told them. Even with a continent between them, the two sisters remained close. One year, they sent each other exactly the same Christmas present, unusual salt and pepper shakers made from pewter and teakwood. Even the children laughed to see the same present they had helped their mother wrap sitting under their own tree.
After a time, the California family moved to Connecticut, so a visit became inevitable. The Buffalo sister and her family loaded up the station wagon and traveled East for the big meeting. How would the children get along?
The artist sister’s house sat on Creamery Road, atop a bluff overlooking the Connecticut river. It was a big rambling house with many windows and small carved birds everywhere. One thing familiar to the Buffalo cousins was the stacks of books that overflowed everywhere. Uncle Joe was as nice as Dad. Uncle Joe’s treasures were stacks and stacks of old stenotype blocks, all the letters of the alphabet in different typefaces, whereas Dad’s were boxes of rocks and fossils. Everybody knew and loved the birds that clustered at the feeders. The kids paired up in three age groups, from the teenagers who went off to listen to the Beatles White Album, to the younger ones, who went off exploring the Connecticut woods and streams. The parents sat in the living room with their shoes off, talking politics, books, and memories, as the sun lowered itself beneath the hazy Connecticut River.
The two Joes, the brothers-in-law, always got along, even though they would never have known each other without the sisters whose lives they shared. The children also got along as if they had known each other all their lives. The children found out that their grandmother always praised whichever children she was not staying with, making all of them feel like bad children. Knowing this made them all feel better, and they become best friends in a short time. As the afternoon waned, all the children gathered themselves near the parents, and the sisters told stories about their own growing up years, when they would play at being Tarzan and Jane, and when they would dance together.
“Who knows when we will be together again?” said one sister to the other. “It’s been such a long time between visits, and the children are growing up.” “And we are not as young as we once were,” said the other. “Who knows if we will be able to dance at all when we meet again?”
“Well, then, sister-dear, let’s dance.”
With that, both sisters hitched up their slacks with exactly the same motion, sighed the same sigh as they straightened their bad knees, and began humming the tune for a famous minuet. The two Joes and all the children chimed in with the humming, as the sisters bowed to each other, clasped hands, and did a stately minuet in their stocking feet. They were surprisingly light on their feet for two stout middle-aged women. With another bow and a “Thank you, sister-dear,” they returned to their seats, to laughter and applause.
