Quite a Dancer -- Julie Hills

The Hills sisters celebrating Easter at the Tucker's -- Spring 2017

Jenny and I are 20 (yes, 20!) years apart. Jenny was born when I was a self-absorbed 20 year-old. I spent approximately 2-1/2 months in the same home with her before heading back to college for my senior year and then to the wild blue yonder of the rest of my life, never to live in my hometown again or near my one and only sister.

Of course, I did come home for vacations on a fairly regular basis and observed Jenny as she grew up (much like a distant aunt). It was on one such visit that my recollection of Jenny as “quite a dancer” occurred.

Jenny was probably about 8 or 9 at the time and had apparently begun tap dancing lessons. Because our entire house was carpeted (including the kitchen!), our mother had a fairly large round wooden board cut so that Jenny could wheel it around the house and plunk it down wherever she wished to practice her tap dancing. It seemed that wherever Tuck and I were in the house during that vacation, whether in the kitchen having a snack, in the basement watching TV, or in the living room reading a book, sooner or later we would hear the turn of that wheel coming around the corner or banging down the steps and soon enough the tap dancing would commence. Jenny never said a thing but I still recall vividly the banging and crashing of those shoes and the flailing of arms that accompanied them, all in an effort, I supposed, to get just a little attention from her big sister.
 
Fortunately, for both of us, Jenny and I have grown very close over the years as our lives have begun to run on parallel tracks.  I thank God that our parents had the blind confidence to welcome one more child into this world in their late 40s so that I was blessed with a sister who is so, so much more than “quite a dancer.”

I love you Jenny and feel so very grateful that you have been my sister for forty years.