Monday 3 October 2011

Being the youngest/smallest

Thinking of dear daughter.

It seems odd now when I have spent all my life being the tallest (6ft), but growing up, in our family, I was the smallest, and only girl.

I have just been dusting an old chair that my grandmother had that is really on its last legs now and is seeing out its days as my bedroom chair. When I lived at home, it had been handed down to my parents and was in the hall next to the grandfather clock and was fairly rickety then. Nobody sat on it, it was just there.

But when there was a family meal that required all our chairs, I, as the smallest, had to sit on the wobbly old chair. Dusting it, I remembered the feeling of having to sit very still because if it moved it might break. Not that I might get hurt but I might break the special chair.

Dear daughter is the smallest in our family and it is always her (she?) who has to sit in the middle in the back seat of the car, take the smallest bed, smallest chair. It makes you feel that you are the least important somehow. Now, as the grown up, I can see that it is just what happens, your older brothers won't fit in these places but it hasn't taken away that feeling.

Love you dear daughter.

3 comments:

  1. How wonderful to have something in your home that you remember from childhood though.

    SP

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  2. How sensitive of you to recall that and tell your daughter that you appreciate her position. My Dad was the smallest of four - one brother was 6' 5" and his two sisters were 6' 2". He at 5'9 described himself as the runt of the litter! It didn't help that both I and my brother grew up to be taller than him.

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  3. Nice post, Rosie. I was second tallest of us 5 sisters growing up, but with my husband and two children all noticeably taller than me, I now know what it feels like to be the smallest - though not, unfortunately, the thinnest :-)

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