The first Mother's Day after all three of my children were in a position to be able to do what they wanted to do as far as gifts for me went (rather than having to rely on their father to assist with gifts) was a Mother's Day that I will always remember. As my three pretty-much grown kids skulked in and out of the house in secrecy I realized how very much the same three children they still were. My two sons and my daughter were clearly delighted as their secret plans fell into place over the course of an early afternoon, and before I knew it they had created an elegant and thoughtful Mother's Day afternoon for me with a level of taste and loveliness that, I guess, I just wasn't expecting. They decorated. There were flowers and a new vase, gourmet chocolates from a shop near one son's work, a bunch of my favorite buttercream potpourri tarts, some nice earrings, and a CD that was just my taste in music. The larger gift, though, was seeing them as the capable adults they'd become; and more importantly, seeing them work so well as a team. I think every mother hopes her children will grow up to be close. Those three kids of mine are close, and I know how important that is.

My siblings and I are at the point in life where both parents have gone. When I think of my own sister and brother and me working together as a team I can't help but remember those days surrounding the death of my mother, when the three of us, shell-shocked and numb, went about doing all the things that needed to be done after losing the mother who had been bedridden for over a year and who suffered terribly. It wasn't just a matter of funeral arrangements. There was a world of things to be done when it came to her house and finances and whatever else there was to deal with. When our father died we were all young, and our mother was the one to deal with things. Since she would remain in her own home there weren't the issues of dealing with an estate, as well as as some of the complicated matters that came about as a result of her long illness. When she died, though, there we were - just us "kids" (39, 44 and 49) - feeling strangely united while feeling equally and woefully alone.

I am the middle child and was (appropriately) seated in the middle the day we went to the funeral home to at least take care of those arrangements. To my left was my "baby brother". To my right was my "big sister".

Let me tell you about my big sister. For five years she and I were two sisters. She was the big one. I was the baby for a while until I turned into "the little one". We played together much of the time. Santa Claus brought us pretty much the same things, although we'd get a few things for our own age-group. We would name the dolls we got for Christmas and play house. (We'd call one another, "auntie" in a very peculiar and high voice, and my father never knew why such a voice and the name "auntie" for each of us was necessary.) As "aunties" we'd pretend that potato chips were fried clams (because we have never seen fried clams). On Saturday mornings we would sit in the living room with a "magic slate", and each of us would draw people and tell stories about our people and then whip up the film on the magic slate and draw more and talk more about what the people we drew were doing.

My sister and I got along all the time when we were young. I saw her as big, and I saw the fact that she was in school as "important" and grown-up. We were happy little girls, and one Saturday morning our father popped his head in our bedroom door and announced that the doctor had called and said we had a new baby brother. He said that the doctor said, "He's little but he's healthy." I've never quite figured out when my mother went to the hospital or whether my father was there and when the aunt who came to be at the house showed up and then left - but my sister and I were delighted to have a baby brother.

When I think of my sister, besides recalling the annual and boring dancing recitals I got dragged to even though I hated tap dancing, I think of two other particular things: We shared a bedroom. One night she apparently wanted to create some magic for her little sister, so she told me when I went to sleep and woke up a fairy would have come and left me a present. I was - needless to say - excited about this fairy that would be coming in the night. I was probably 4 or 5, and she was 9 or 10. When I woke the next morning on the chest that was mine was a peculiar toy (one of the "Three Men in a Tub" I think, and I'd never liked it) that had been hers when she was a baby. When I got a look at what this so-called "fairy" was supposed to have left two things hit me: 1) I was incredibly disappointed and 2) I was incredibly moved to think that she was willing to give me this toy that had been hers most of her life. I began to cry really hard, and when my mother came in to see what was going on and found out about the fairy story she kind of scolded my sister. I was crying too hard, and I was too little, to explain to my mother I wasn't crying because I was disappointed but was crying because my sister had tried so hard to create some magic for me.

Just before my seventh birthday and just before I was about to make First Communion my mother got pneumonia, and there was a question that it could also be tuberculosis. She was in the hospital for several months, which meant that it was a good thing she had brought me to get my beautiful First Communion dress early but which also meant she would not be there to see me lead the First Communion line or to curl my straight hair (which she had done every school night since I'd started school). One memory that stays poignantly with me all these years later is that of my twelve-year-old sister, who wasn't all that much taller than I ( compared with adults), standing directly in front me and trying to get my hair right as her tears fell right past my face and onto the ground. She would be the one to stand with my father in the church and cry as her little sister led the First Communion parade. During those months when my mother was hospitalized she and I would cry every night because we missed her and because we were so afraid she would die.

At the time, our baby brother was a toddler. Because he had been premature he was sick a lot, and he got pneumonia a couple of times. Every time he would get a fever he'd take a seizure, which was absolutely terrifying. My sister and I would stand by, scared to death, as my father took care of the baby and got him out to the hospital. A few times he was admitted, and we'd watch our father go between one hospital and another, calling one hospital, and then calling my mother, and then another hospital. She and I were pretty grown-up as we worried together about our mother, our little brother, and our exhausted father.

My aunt had quit her job, and my father paid her to watch us while he worked, and, of course, my brother was allowed to run wild as a two-year-old because everyone had been so terrified at how sick he'd been. I was an extremely small seven-year-old and he was a good-sized two-year-old, and he started to terrorize me and even my sister (twelve) in a way that nobody would ever think a toddler could do to older kids. He would tease and tease and get us upset, and one day my sister was so upset she ran after him and fell down and did something to her nose. Another time my out-of-control brother leaped off the arm of the couch and through the glass on a french door (without much injury). He had become a happy, teasing, wild, fresh, little boy who was king.

In a few years my sister outgrew his torture, but I remained for the long haul. In pictures he and I almost look like twins, so it was rough even though I was older. For years he and I hated each other a good part of the time, although he had also become my playmate in view of the fact that I still needed to play and my sister was now too big. There would be times in the backseat of the car when we'd get a whole big fight going because someone was looking at the other one. Sometimes, though, we'd play "club" quite well. He would announce that we were "going to have a club" and that he'd be "president". Even five years older, when I said politely one time, "I'd like to be president", he said, "I'm the president. You're the treasurer". (Not that the treasurer or the president ever did anything past stating their office in these do-nothing clubs). We honestly didn't like each other a good part of the time, and yet - oh so many memories of playing Vacu-Form, Creepy Crawlers, GI Joe and Barbie in a boat, and Erector set!

My brother was messy, and I was neat. My sister was messy, and I was neat. Nobody understood why I wanted to be neat, and neither of them appreciated my pickiness. My brother ate all his Trick or Treat candy. My sister at all hers. I would store mine and never eat it. My mother would eventually throw it away after a long time had passed. I am the middle child, as I said. I had had the benefit of being close to both my sister and brother. I think I came to see myself as some sort of glue in the family.

My brother was 16 when our father died, and it wasn't until I had grown much older and realized how awfully young he was to lose his father. My sister was married when our father died. With my brother going through his own thing and her married, I played man-of-the-house until my mother began to take on more of her new role as widow (and until my brother got a little older).

The most meaningful memory I have with my brother is the Thanksgiving when my mother had died the day before and when my youngest children were with their other grandmother and when he, and my oldest son, and I sat at the dining room table to eat the dinner my brother had cooked (I guess because we had nothing better to do that day.). My grown baby-brother has done a lot for me. So has my big sister.

What siblings share grows with them in ways we don't really expect.

When my sister and I go shopping and see little, tiny, elderly, ladies who must be sisters we smile and say, "That's how we're going to be."

When I see my kids with their siblings I'm proud of them. My parents would be proud of me and my siblings too. Siblings can hold things together when it seems all could fly away.