Every couple of weeks I call my brothers. The agenda for the call goes first; How are you doing; second what are you doing and then it wanders on to what happened in the family a long time ago.
A lot did happen in our family. My brother and I were Irish twins. Irish twins are when there are two births within the same year. My brother was born on the 6th of the month and I did not turn one until the 21st of the month
Twins get a bum rap for being able to get into mischief. We've all heard ,"What one can't think of the other one will."
However, I think Irish twins can get into mischief by just standing there.
When my brother and I were 3 and 4 we were sent up to our paternal grand parents in the middle of the winter. I'm not sure how long we stayed with them but I remember grandma had the big feather comforter that was about 12 " thick.
We then went to our uncle Fred's. We got into our aunt's cupboard and found her dried apples which she used for making pies. Fortunately we were caught before we managed to eat the whole package.
Then we went to Uncle Albert's . Here, we found a package of playing cards that we hid so that we could play with them but we didn't know any card games.
Then we went to Uncle Friske's, who had a large three story house. This was a great place to run around. The teacher boarded there and took us to school the next day. Some of the bigger kids supervised us. The teacher later became our Aunt.
At some time our family was rescued from us. The hostage exchange was made in the village.
Why were we away from home in the winter? We think we were sent away when our brother was born. You can see why they wouldn't want us in the house during a birth.
So did nobody want us and kept sending us to different families or did they all want us and took turns looking after us?
Memories of children is suspect. One of us will remember one thing but not another. How accurate is our memory as young children? The other factor is that now we are in our mid eighties. That's about 80 years ago the this happened.
For us it's pleasant to look back.