Somewhere Between A Wish And A Truth: Two Generations of Siblings
By Carinn Jade
It was something about becoming parents that rendered our shared childhood irrelevant.
My brother slides his infant daughter into her high chair at Thanksgiving dinner. She picks up her plastic spoon and flings it across the table whereby it hits her brother in the head.
“Ow!” he yells and begins to cry. “She hurt me!”
“She didn’t mean it,” my brother explains. “She’s your sister, she loves you very much.”
Hearing those words from brother’s mouth amidst the tension that hangs between us triggers something so deep that I lose my breath.
“That’s right,” I whisper at the dinner table, my gaze moving from my nephew and niece to my own son and daughter, all four born in as many years.
With my eyes I want to warn them, but I don’t know how. I don’t know when it went from us playing school, and sharing late night mac and cheese, and visiting one another’s colleges to the awkward tension between us now. Was it choosing godparents for our children? Was it trying to plan our parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary? Was it everything in between?
Growing up, my brother and I were so close I barely knew where he began and I ended. We cared for one another, made each other laugh, drove each other crazy. There were periods of time when we drifted apart before we came back together, but I don’t remember the distance and resentment the way it exists today.
For most of our lives we drove in our own lanes. I was the teacher, the writer, the future lawyer. He was the investigator, the scientist, the future computer genius. I was the one who dated, while he waited for “the one.” My brother sought answers; I dwelled in the questions. Since we were opposites in almost every way, there was no competition. On our worst days, we did our own thing side-by-side. On our best days we supported and complemented each other perfectly. The yin to my yang.
My brother and I were born twenty-three months apart, exactly the age difference between my own son and daughter. I watch my children play and fight, scream and hug, shifting from one to the next and back again without any transition. My husband, unfamiliar with this dynamic, looks at me and wonders aloud, “is this normal?” and I’m so choked up I can only nod my head yes. This is exactly how it used to be. Until it was no longer.
It was something about becoming parents that rendered our shared childhood irrelevant. My brother and I live across the street from one another in a city of millions, and our children go to the same school. Yet those hours we’d spent reminiscing about how we grew up were now replaced by bickering over the way we’d raise our own. You let them eat that? You let them watch this? The way we used to rib each other, as siblings do, suddenly felt like daggers to the heart when they involved our progeny. Everything became a competition and we judged each other harshly.
I fear I will spend the rest of my life watching my son and daughter interact, waiting for the rift that will send them in a new direction, one where the sibling bond is stretched so thin it no longer filters anything. I had two children close together so I could replicate what my brother and I had. How could I have known that having them would change us?
At five and three-years-old, we haven’t yet touched on the inevitable sibling rough patches that will sprout up. Right now they share a room, they love doing everything together and neither one remembers a day that the other didn’t exist. There is no hint of the playdates where one will be ousted or the secrets they will share with friends the other doesn’t know. How long will this cohesion last? A few years? A decade? As a mother and a sister, that’s not good enough. I want them to be close forever. Because I believe we can be close forever, despite where we are today.
When I hear my brother say to his son, “that’s your sister, she loves you. She will always love you, no matter what,” I wonder if it’s a wish for his own children or whether he knows it’s true.
Carinn Jade is a mother, lawyer, writer and non-sleeper. She tweets @carinnjade and blogs at WelcomeToTheMotherhood.com.
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