That's how it was on Irving Circle and how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. I stayed with it because we both had queenly older sisters who rarely condescended to play with us, because Shelley was adopted and I was not, because Shelley had Clue and Life, and I did not Elinor Lipman
About This Quote

Growing up, I often felt that I didn’t measure up. I was not as smart as my older sister, Shelley, and she was a perfectionist. She had a gift for writing and for art, and I did not. In fact, as a kid I never liked drawing.

But the thing about our family was that those things didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that we loved each other and we got along. If one of us was having fun, the others were too.

That’s how I was raised: You made the best out of what was within reach, which meant friendships engineered by parents and by the happenstance of housing. We were all good friends because our parents loved each other and loved us more than anything else in the world – more than their ability to succeed or to be number one at the chess club or the debate team or whatever they thought it took to make us happy. And so we had a great family life – great for kids – but not so great for me because it made me feel like a failure when I couldn’t measure up to my sisters in some way.

Source: The Inn At Lake Devine

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