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My Brothers and Sisters: Silk and Sandpaper
Why our sibling rivalries live on way past childhood
My mother died last year. I am the oldest, and I mean oldest (72), of six. There is a thirteen-year span between the oldest and youngest. We are all adults (sort of).
During my mother’s illness and over the course of her dying, we were at our best and our low-down worst with each other.
Letting go and holding on
We were parents and grandparents. We had rich lives and interesting professions. We had chosen good partners. But in shadows, we were still children.
The day after the funeral, we gathered at my mother’s house to prepare it for sale. There was instant regression. Without my parents as guardrails, we bumped, slammed, and whined. Who wants what? Who deserves it? Who always gets more?
Holding on and letting go
A frankly ugly bowl sat in the middle of the kitchen table, where it had been stationed for decades.
“Hey, I remember this bowl,” said the youngest sister.
“So do I. I want it,” said the oldest brother.
“Wait a minute,” protested a middle sister. “Don’t think you’re going to get it just like you always do.”
“Well, I want it too,” a younger brother added meekly. “I think I made it in school.”
“No, you didn’t,” replied the middle sister. “That one is upstairs. This one means something to me.” She surprised us all in her tenacity.
For an entire hour, the issue of the ugly old bowl continued. We got up from the table and forged alliances with other siblings. We whispered decades old criticisms of each other. “He always.” “She never.” Words like “selfish” and “thoughtless” peppered the conflict.
I had no skin in this particular game. But I felt uncomfortable, with a mixture of memories I couldn’t quite place, the emergence of competition, the impatience with each other, and the importance of the “win,” even over a piece of crap.
My brother got the bowl. The only one happy about it was him.
