OWAV:)...06/14/11...4am...41°...Sunny

As I type the date I realize it is my sister Barbara's birthday...82 years old today...Bobbie as we always called her was 13 the year I was born...She more like a mom to me, was my favorite sister.

A few years ago I asked her why that was?..She told me that our mom was very sick after I was born...I was her 6th full term pregnancy, don't know how many miscarries along the way...Common in those days...She was 32 and had been married at 16, divorced, remarried, lost a 2 1/2 year old son...husband injured in a mining accident...in the midst of the great depression...moved to a different town...almost died when pregnant with me when she had an emergency hemorrhoid operation...then a most difficult birth when I was born...and a hysterectomy shortly after my birth...No wonder she was sick...Bobbie took over the mother role and cared for me and the household for the next 3 years until she married and had her own son.

Sister Bobbie

Bobbie today, is still the sister with a bubbly personality and when we are together entertains us with her many stories...she can keep us in stitches for hours retelling stories about the many crazy people she has worked with or had for neighbors and friends ...She worked many years as a waitress, store clerk and food supervisor in a nursing home... Always working with people and always adding to her repertoire of stories...She and her husband Jim, live their retirement years in McAlister, Oklahoma, a lakeside paradise in tornado alley...Bobbie always adding beauty to the world, has transformed this acreage, from an untamed brush patch, littered with garbage, to a garden alive with blooms...Just ten years ago when she ran out of space to plant any new gardens, she decided to dig a pond in an old driveway...Armed with pick and shovel, she in her early 70's started digging...always the thrifty one, she didn't buy a pond kit but made her own out of recycled materials, she added a pump to the pond...Her husband Jim made a birdhouse so as they sit by the new pond in the cool of an evening, they are entertained by birds building a nest and starting a family...Soon an unexpected visitor in the form of a "cottonmouth snake" appeared...Bobbie rigged a hot wire, low to the ground, around the pond and the snake learned to keep its distance..

She is a friend and "grandmother" to neighboring children, always ready with food if someone is sick...an animal lover, she always has pets...dogs, cats, and one time adopted a nest of abandoned magpies, feeding them first with an eye dropper then soggy dog food until they were old enough to eat the dry stuff...How lucky I was to have her for my second mother...OWAV:)