What if You or I Had Been an Only Child?

It Can Be Lonely at the Top

While it is difficult to know, or even to guess exactly how my life would have been different had I not had siblings, I can only venture a guess. Without my older sister, things would have certainly entirely different, and much happier. Though we did and occasionally still do have some good times together, it takes just about everything I have to manage spending a few hours, or a day with her. She is not a bad person, but she is very headstrong, and seems to think she should be respected, simply because she is the eldest of the three sisters. 

She happens to have Bipolar disorder, which has been very much of a challenge for everyone in the family. She was not diagnosed until about twenty years ago, as not very much was known about the brain disorder then.  She is a person, that even as a young child, thought she knew better than either of my parents. It was a very good thing that I was able to recognize when she was doing something I knew was not right, including taking things which were not hers at all.  Last week, she nearly got herself arrested for arguing with a firefighter who instructed her to move away from an electrical fire which broke out underground near her home.  She thought that just because she had called 911, and because the security guard from the business next to where the fire was, as well as the fact that she is now seventy years old, that he was being rude, and she just plain did not want to comply, or listen to authority.  She finally did move back, when he told her in no uncertain terms that if she did not do as he said, she would be arrested.

Working an
Electrical Fire

Hey, at least she is much better than she has been in many years.  


When she was still a young child, my Dad especially, corrected her bad behavior, and her defying his authority.  She would challenge him, endlessly, which eventually ended up with her getting a licking. Even that didn't help, as she was just dead set that her was was right, and she would just keep up doing whatever she wanted to do. 


When my Dad especially corrected her incorrect, and even bad behavior, she would challenge him, which eventually ended up with her getting a licking. Even that didn't help, as she was just dead set that her was was right, and she would just keep up doing whatever she wanted to do. 

Medical Facilities

My youngest sister is a very intelligent woman, and is well educated, as well. But, when she was in her teens, she was definitely butting heads with our father. It took her awhile to straighten out, but she finally did, and today, as a matter of fact is hers and her husband's forty-first wedding anniversary. 


My younger sister has been in nursing for more than thirty-five years, doing everything from hands on patient care, to holding and managing vaccination clinics, helping design and setup new urgent care facilities, and is now in the administrative end of managing the bloodless medicine program as one of the better hospitals in the area.  She is a phenomenal woman and professional, who in her off time, still does search and rescue with her Bloodhounds.


I think there are many things to consider that may possible have had to be different when I was a child, for me to have done what I really want to in life. I was very ill as a small child, and the effects of that still affect my life today. 


Barring the illnesses I had as a child, I would probably have been either a doctor, or an attorney, or possible both. I still have a great interest in both law as well as many thing in the medical field, as well as in veterinary medicine. Though I was not able to do those things, I am certainly happy that my eldest grandson is attending college, pursuing an education in Veterinary Medicine, specializing in trauma care. 

Practicing Veterinarian?

Things may not always turn out as we may have initially wanted, or dreamed of, but they certainly could have been worse, too. I am alive, which if not for penicillin, I would be long since dead, and there would have been no grandchildren. I would not have had the opportunity to have a really wonderful younger sister, or she and her husband's two wonderful daughters for nieces, either. 

Horse and Buggy?

My life could certainly have been better in some ways, but it could also have been much worse, or I could have even still died.  I had one cousin who contracted Polio in the early 1950s, and was in an "iron lung," for a time, paralyzed, and having problems walking for the rest of her life.  She is now in her late sixties, and has again been affected with the after affects of Polio, as have so many others, later in life.  I could have gotten Muscular Dystrophy, as did another of my sweet and O so kind cousins,  Having to live in a wheel chair, and dying at the age of only nine years of age.  But, I am still here, and though my body is no perfect, I am alive, and get to do many things some others have missed out on.  Maybe I cannot do many things I once did, but I can still do other things I love doing.  Hey, I'm alive, and I can walk again, usually without my cane.  Though I do miss my favorite things, such as singing eight octaves, and riding horses, I can still sing, though nothing like I once did, I do still have a voice.  I still dream of riding horses again, one day.  Maybe I will get a sulky, or something like a doctor's buggy they used in the days before people depended on cars, and drive my high stepping spirited horse.

Patient Nurse

We must face the facts of life as it is, not necessarily as we wished it would be, again.  Face reality, and be glad for what you have, and who you are, and for the things you have accomplished in life.  There is only one you, and only one me, so learn to make the best of it, for it certainly could be much worse.


When we are born, we are pretty much a blank slate. No one knows what we will turn out to be, until we finally reach an age where we are mature, physically, mentally, and emotionally. That is when we find out what we are made of.


We either face the world and make the best of it, or we wimp out and let it beat us. We either succeed at becoming a respected, and responsible adult, who can stand on their own two feet, or we become someone who thinks the world owes us everything.