HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SANDRA!

Today is a very special day. Fifty-eight years ago my little sister, Sandra Helene Erickson (Sanford) was born in Frontier Hospital. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and Dad had taken us three kids on an afternoon drive to see an oil well that was being drilled in the area, quite a novelty at that time. When we got back to town we found out that we had a baby sister. I remember jumping up and down for joy on the lid that opened to Grandma and Grandpa Erickson's basement stairs! And I'm still jumping for joy for my sister and best friend. Have a great day, Sis!

Our mother came down with polio in July of 1952. She was taken by air ambulance from Frontier to the General Hospital in Regina. She was there for six weeks, three of them in an isolation ward. Dad went up to visit a few times but letters and cards were the main lines of communication, no phone calls to patients in those days. I still have some of the letters that were exchanged. I spent most of those weeks with Aunt Edith, Uncle Herb and little Cheryl Haaland and enjoyed that stay very much. Merv spent some of the time with Aunt Camilla and Uncle Hans Olson. They lived just a mile from Uncle Herb's so I remember biking back and forth, after I learned to ride cousin Ralph's bike. Alan stayed at the farm with Dad. Grandma Erickson helped out with cooking, cleaning, washing clothes etc.. Dad was pretty helpless when it came to making meals. The boys remember crackers and milk as one of his menus!

Mom came home after the six weeks, but was unable to walk on her own. We had no downstairs bedroom so the sunporch became their bedroom until a bedroom and bathroom were added on to the house. Sandra arrived right on her due date in our small town hospital. We had a hired girl, Inis Lindstrom from Divide, and we all loved her. (Those sure were good cookies, Inis!) Her boyfriend would come and get her on weekends and they were married a couple years later!

Although the ten years between us seemed a lot at that time, those years don't mean much now. Sandra got ahead of me in several ways! Her youngest baby, Mandy, arrived a year before our Todd. And she became a grandma the year before I did! In fact both my brothers also had grandchildren before I did! As the oldest in the family, I was really feeling left out, until Dawson, Abbey and Carter all arrived in one year. Now I have caught up to them all as Sandra and I each have seven grandchildren, Merv and Alan each have six. Merv and Alan both managed to have twin granddaughters, something Sandra and I haven't been able to accomplish!

I don't have many of our Erickson family pictures on my computer but will add a couple. The one of Sandra and I was taken in Grandma and Grandpa Erickson's dining-room on one of my birthdays. The family picture was taken by a fellow who travelled for the wheat pool. It's my favorite family picture as it pictures our everyday life with Dad in his overalls and Mom in her house dress. (no wearing slacks for the women in those days!)

Sandra was here for Howard's 75th birthday celebration in August so I'll close with a picture of the two of us taken at Salem Lutheran Church on August 8, 2010. I hope that we can spend many more years sharing each others lives in visits and phone calls.