Being 21, it’s difficult nowadays to imagine myself treating my older siblings (Zoe and Lee) in the manner I see my younger brothers and sister treat me. There was a time when I looked upon my older brother and sister and saw them in a glowing light, similar to what a child sees in an adult. They were big, brave. Their actions were reinforced by their size and their words, and there appeared to be something ineffable about being an adult, when one is a child. The ability to decide when to go to bed, when to eat (and the ability to cook the food, no less), and the rich, authoritative aura of an adult’s confidence when expressing their opinion. Yes, it is all something to aspire to, isn’t it? Knowing how to voice your opinion and knowing your opinion will be heard.
Being the master of one’s own fate.
This ineffability, therefore, might be liberty.
My older brother was 12 when I was born, the same age as me when my younger brother Alex came into the world. My sister was 18 going on 38. The living situation has changed in the 21 years since. Of the three of my mother’s children, I am the only one to have gone into higher education, and that won’t change at this point. A lot has happened, as is typical of any family. Disagreements that become doubts. Seeds of disbelief that what two people once shared is under threat. This feeling of threat, of a relationship being endangered, comes with its concomitant scrutiny. We have all been there. That moment when an untouchable bond, once a beautiful glade — festooned with life and vigour while remaining, in many aspects, discreetly distant from the outside world — becomes a lake of heat-oppressed ice.
A road of eggshells. From the next moment, taking a step is to jeopardize the present, to discard the past and shroud the future in an unknown. When the first sketched crack appears in the ice, when the first eggshell cries under unstoppable pressure, there is no going back. To err is human. To believe there is something in everything is human. We are a species with a dire ineptitude as far as our emotions are concerned. (Pick up a pad and pen, and spend a day making a note of each emotion you feel as and when it arrives. The sudden boiling heat of rage or the slow, overwhelming exhaustion that comes when the day’s work is done. There are so many more).
Yes, families are ever reshaping themselves. My sister gave birth when I was 13 months old, for example.
My nephew Mike is, for all intents and purposes, an unofficial brother. We spent much of our childhood playing sports and fighting with one another. And that often led to me and Zoe being at odds. The smart-ass younger brother obnoxiously standing his ground against not just a sister, but also a mother. A day without the gruesome competition of being the alpha male in our little group of two was dull, and yet every day enduring it was something akin to a first world hell.
Now, when we play tennis in the summer, grown up as we are, the hell returns! Not a point is played without antagonism, without pointless dispute. Childhood (for all of its many wonderful memories) is littered with moments of naivety and emotional instability, yet these very irritants of existence prevent a child from realizing that adults can be naïve and unstable, too. Empathy is a difficult thing to hone as a child. Humility is damn near impossible. We strive to be recognized; we reach for the stars if we can, for success is, a child believes, how to gain a parent’s approval. More importantly, it gains the approval of one’s peers.
For my recent 21st birthday, my mother coated the living room in photographs of the family. Mike, my older siblings, Lee and Zoe, and I were the stars. Lee with his short hair and natural smile; Zoe with her wild ginger locks that nobody can quite explain (I won’t mention the fiery temper….) The images were, for the older family members, memories. An opportunity to recollect and smile and laugh and set internal reminders to spend more time together. For me, they were whirling whispers of a time I could only really lie about remembering, for the most part. Times that I had partial recollection of, and the rest I know I have contrived. I can barely remember my brother’s junior football team playing in a professional side’s stadium, where they won a trophy. I have one small flashback of it in my head, and the footage is only two or three seconds at most. There are birthdays. Power Rangers cakes and he’s wrapped his arms around me. There is joy. I can see myself in him, and I see him in me. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes I struggle to really filter any of it; I wonder if he’s proud of me.
Nowadays, we see each other when I return home from university. An English Literature student and a gardener with a daughter in high school. We have our secrets, our separate lives that, given time, we could undoubtedly share in telling tales and elucidating facts about each of our lives. The time for such pondering never appears, however, and yet this seems okay. When we speak, there is love. Brotherly love; the sort of love that doesn’t require any rekindling; the sort of love that, when either of us needs it, the other can simply give it. Just by being oneself. Whether we’re a single street away or two hundred miles. And it’s a love as potent as that which I bear towards my younger siblings.
And I think this is the point. As a middle sibling, I and many others out there, can be thankful for the role models I had standing tall around me. For the things I’ve learned about being a brother, for the things I’ve learned about family, for the times when I’ve realized a smile, or any true expression, can say more than a dozen tricky words.
I think that last one is what family is about.
Click here to read Siblings: Part 1.
Photo Credit:
Reading little brother a bedtime story by flashlight in the tent by Mark Stosberg
via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
Recent Shaun Carter Articles:
- Concrete 3D Printing: Armouring from the Inside
- The Impact of Sitting Volleyball: Part One
- Silence Kills Best
- Siblings: Part 2
- Siblings: Part 1
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