Sibling memories.

Spring break, and two out of three siblings are home for the week.

With a much-needed respite from her grueling student teaching semester, Middle took the opportunity to join me at work yesterday, which is always a joy.

On the drive yesterday, we got behind a Mercury Cougar – an older, sporty make, which we see rarely enough that it’s worth a comment. It’s the car our three kids shared when they were in high school.

Theirs was a dark green. And not quite so clean and un-scratched.

Middle reminisced about the one year when all three of them rode to school together every morning. Oldest, who was a senior that year, drove. Middle was a freshman. And The Boy, though he was actually still in middle school, attended a geometry class at our high school during the first hour of the day. So every morning at 7:00 they’d pile bulging backpacks into the hatch, fold themselves up like pretzels in order to fit into the tiny Cougar, and head out on the five-minute drive.

This adoring mama spent a lot of nervous moments on those mornings. A word to the uninitiated: High school parking lots are a death trap. I spent a lot of time in them both before and after school, and I couldn’t begin to count the number of crashes and nearly-flattened pedestrians I witnessed over the years.

But our three never came to any harm (if you don’t count the time the school choral conductor, who later became a lifelong mentor to the younger two, backed into the Cougar at dismissal time one afternoon). What they did take away was a lot of happy memories.

So, back to yesterday. Upon seeing a Cougar on the way to work, Middle reminisced about those school days, especially the music they played on the car CD player, singing their hearts out all the way. An eclectic play list that included the soundtrack from the musical “1776,” Queen, Back Street Boys, and Herb Alpert’s Greatest Hits (???).

“You three are so lucky to have that kind of shared memory,” I said, as we continued down the road on the way to work. “some siblings don’t have that.”

Middle thought for a moment. “I don’t think I know anyone who has such great memories with their siblings.”

She might be right. Our three certainly had their ugly moments over the years, in which teasing, smacking, tattling, and screaming featured heavily. But they were also their own self-contained unit. They made up goofy songs (one of which Oldest posted on Facebook for her sibs, out of the blue, last weekend). Spent most of two summers taping homemade Harry Potter videos. Built mock ecosystems in the back yard. Helped each other with heavy loads of AP homework. Proudly attended each other’s special events. Once they got over the rivalry years, they became a mutual admiration society.

Hang on tight to those special sibling memories, my darlings. I have a feeling they’ll become more and more precious as the years go on.

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