Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Sibling Revivalry
There are 8 years separating me and my next younger sister. Of course, there’s a brother in between us, but I have about as much in common with him as I do with any isolationist mortgage broker who lives in Texas. Bevin is 23, and then Colleen is 2 years younger, about to turn 21 this June. They both attend Mizzou, and this year they live together on East Campus. I’m visiting this week, just a few days, with my girls, who are just 3 years apart themselves.
Being 8 years older than Bevin, and 10 ½ more than Colleen, I was old enough to change diapers when they came along, but then I went to junior high and high school and away from them. They have grown up as acquaintances, people who lived with my parents. I didn’t really come to know them until after I was a married homeowner, when my parents moved up to St. Louis, just a block away, as if we were some long-term family with roots in the area. Which we are, except for that whole 20 years on the road thing we did.
They are much cooler than I am—than I ever was. They know how to drink hard liquor and how to dance at bars. They are smart and interesting, and I’m a mom of two kids who drives a mini-van. I look at them and I know that they wouldn’t have much tolerance for me if there wasn’t kinship. Of course, that road runs both ways; they are lucky too for the bond.
Their apartment, a full floor of a house, is filled with a hodgepodge of cast-off furniture and knickknacks, some from my house, some from my mother’s. I’m sitting in a chair I stole from the dorm; Bevin’s dresser is mine, simply painted black. The kitchen table was from my first apartment, the pots are my parents’ first cookware. There are little reminders everywhere, but jarring juxtapositions as well. The Day of the Dead statue by the computer and the lacquered mannequin in the living room are creepy and out of place next to that end table from my grandmother’s house. It’s like walking through a dreamscape—everything seems right, except for the glowing pink dog.
They’re sort of like that, too. We have similar tendencies towards obsessive-compulsive disorder, but Bevin’s is far more pronounced. The arguments sound like ones I’ve had, but they’re a little edgier. The bumper stickers on the coffee table are places I once frequented—but I don’t put bumper stickers on my coffee table anymore. Wanting to balance my visit with a friend’s birthday night and feeling guilty is very familiar to times when they visited me in college. Colleen’s boyfriend has a similar laid-back stay-in-the-background demeanor Mike once had (but no longer).
Soon, perhaps already, we will all be adults together. They will marry, or maybe not, have kids, or maybe not, and we will take pictures of the whole family on my parents’ back porch. We will argue about politics and religion and go camping and get drunk and wonder how we could possibly come from the same family. Our parents will age and we will resent each other for being there, or not being there, or not being able to be there but desperately wanting to. We will send annoying Christmas letters to each other and know in our hearts that everyone is lying.
But I hope we don’t disappear from each other’s lives. Even my brother—in the end, we know each other better than anyone can, I was there when each of them was born. We have enjoyed and survived our childhoods together and there is this common memory, or shared base, perhaps, that no one else in our lives, no matter how close we may think we are to that person, can ever have.
Bevin stands in the doorway drinking whiskey and soda, teasing my younger daughter and making her laugh.
Being 8 years older than Bevin, and 10 ½ more than Colleen, I was old enough to change diapers when they came along, but then I went to junior high and high school and away from them. They have grown up as acquaintances, people who lived with my parents. I didn’t really come to know them until after I was a married homeowner, when my parents moved up to St. Louis, just a block away, as if we were some long-term family with roots in the area. Which we are, except for that whole 20 years on the road thing we did.
They are much cooler than I am—than I ever was. They know how to drink hard liquor and how to dance at bars. They are smart and interesting, and I’m a mom of two kids who drives a mini-van. I look at them and I know that they wouldn’t have much tolerance for me if there wasn’t kinship. Of course, that road runs both ways; they are lucky too for the bond.
Their apartment, a full floor of a house, is filled with a hodgepodge of cast-off furniture and knickknacks, some from my house, some from my mother’s. I’m sitting in a chair I stole from the dorm; Bevin’s dresser is mine, simply painted black. The kitchen table was from my first apartment, the pots are my parents’ first cookware. There are little reminders everywhere, but jarring juxtapositions as well. The Day of the Dead statue by the computer and the lacquered mannequin in the living room are creepy and out of place next to that end table from my grandmother’s house. It’s like walking through a dreamscape—everything seems right, except for the glowing pink dog.
They’re sort of like that, too. We have similar tendencies towards obsessive-compulsive disorder, but Bevin’s is far more pronounced. The arguments sound like ones I’ve had, but they’re a little edgier. The bumper stickers on the coffee table are places I once frequented—but I don’t put bumper stickers on my coffee table anymore. Wanting to balance my visit with a friend’s birthday night and feeling guilty is very familiar to times when they visited me in college. Colleen’s boyfriend has a similar laid-back stay-in-the-background demeanor Mike once had (but no longer).
Soon, perhaps already, we will all be adults together. They will marry, or maybe not, have kids, or maybe not, and we will take pictures of the whole family on my parents’ back porch. We will argue about politics and religion and go camping and get drunk and wonder how we could possibly come from the same family. Our parents will age and we will resent each other for being there, or not being there, or not being able to be there but desperately wanting to. We will send annoying Christmas letters to each other and know in our hearts that everyone is lying.
But I hope we don’t disappear from each other’s lives. Even my brother—in the end, we know each other better than anyone can, I was there when each of them was born. We have enjoyed and survived our childhoods together and there is this common memory, or shared base, perhaps, that no one else in our lives, no matter how close we may think we are to that person, can ever have.
Bevin stands in the doorway drinking whiskey and soda, teasing my younger daughter and making her laugh.
