I've never had a babysitter. I don't know what that experience would be like, some strange or half familiar girl six or eight years older than me, regulating my few hours between dinner and bed, like an omnipotent queen, making my dinner and commanding every detail of my evening after that, while my parents were out on some far more luxurious feast with friends.

It might have been pleasant, depending on the nature of the babysitter, to be led by the soft hand of a stranger who knew me not. It would be an adventure for a five year old boy into an unknown forest, til I fell asleep.

But it was not to be, not even a chance, as I had three sisters, one thirteen, one twelve and one seven years older than myself, three ministering angels always looking over me, knowing my needs and also my wants, my character, one might go so far as to say my mind. They had watched my development from a babe, holding me, even guiding my first steps and first words, my earliest education from an infant to a five year old boy. They were my babysitters, the best one could wish for.

I don't know how often my parents left me in their care for an evening. They had a rich social life and many friends, gregarious both, and so I'm sure it happened every few weeks. But their absence was seamless to me, so smoothly did my three sisters, or perhaps only two or one of them minister to all my needs, my favorite dinner and after dinner entertainment, perhaps a television show or a board game, accompanied with a favorite record on our cabinet sized console, because we did have a large collection and I did have my favorites even at that age, country music, Hank Williams to be precise, on the top of the list. I had an infatuation with cowboys and Indians.

I'm sure the task of feeding me, entertaining me and putting me to bed was no task at all for their practised hands, no chore at all, probably a pleasure. I'm sure they weren't paid. So perhaps 'babysitting' isn't the appropriate term. It was sisterly love in the office of a simple familial duty.

And I'm sure, as they understood me so well and I was rather an angelic and compliant child to begin with, this so called duty was the mildest of tasks, pleasing them as much as me.

I remember they would read me bedtime stories. I can recall 'The cat in the hat' and 'Simple Simon'. My father and mother picked out such a choice library for me which lay in some ten or fifteen volumes on a shelf near my bedside, a motley collection, some large with pictures, others smaller and thicker, the smallest being a fine three volume collection of the works of Hans Christian Anderson that fitted in a box. There was only one simple ink sketch at the beginning of each of his tales which ranged in length from three to forty pages, but the richness of his words made up for for such scarcity of drawings, even in the eyes of a five year old.

Thumbalina, The Princess and the pea, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Match Girl, I remember them vividly and with the faint traces of the numerous pangs of emotions they once ignited in my heart.

And I'm sure, as one of my sisters sat at my bedside to read me one of those stories, she chose the one she liked the most. I was amenable to them all, to the tenth iteration.

Such is love, pleasing us both and stitched together by fine literature.