03 Treopia Washington: Close Siblings

Transcript:

Well, I can remember, because I have to admit now, my birth preceded theirs. And I can remember being so excited when my father told me that, well, Ernest was the older brother, that I had a baby brother. That was just the most exciting thing in the world. And then when Scott was born two years later, I must admit that his birth, which occurred on December 23^rd, reinforced my belief in Santa Claus. Because my father was working Christmas Eve, serving a party as usual, my mother was in the hospital because my baby brother had just been born. And Christmas morning, when I got up, my cousin spent the night with me, I had everything I had wished for. So nobody could tell me that there was no Santa Claus. Because I knew that Santa Claus had come that night because my parents were not there. But, we were always close. Of course, I was older and they were ‘little kids’ as far as I was concerned. So we were never in school at the same time but our family was one that mother always said that each of us was equally important to she and my father. And that’s the way we were trained and that’s the way we grew up. When my mother passed, we were in the lawyer’s office because of course there are business things that have to be done at that time, and he said he had never seen a family that had just, because it was understood that whatever was there would be equally divided among the three of us. Because there’s no way that any favoritism had ever been shown. Of course, my younger brother Scott talks about the fact that when I was in college, my mother, from the time I was born, made and designed all my clothes because she was a home-ec major and sewing was a hobby of hers. And he said he used to get so tired of having to try my dresses on because she would make things to send to me in college. And she would make him try them on in order to hem them. So I’m still trying to be forgiven for that. [laughing] But we still remain very close.