THE CHALLENGED — AUGUST DAILY PROMPT
I wish I had Sisters
Prompt #2 — What child position are you in your family, and do you like it, or would you change it?
This prompt is from Karen Schwartz. She asks, “What child position are you in your family, and do you like it, or would you change it?
….
Disappointment reared its ugly head. Another brother! I have two already. Why wasn’t this a sister?
Mom and Dad had been married for four years when I was born in 1950. They no longer had to live with Dad’s parents in their house — they had graduated to a one-bedroom apartment upstairs in a house near downtown London, Ontario.
Dad’s four older sisters and brothers had kids already and fortunately for her, they gave Mom plenty of advice on child-rearing.
When my first brother came along two years later, it became cramped with two cribs and their bed in one bedroom.
Probably, I was jealous of the new baby but my envy doesn’t show in any of the pictures. Mom was always smiling and so were my little brother and me. Mom told me of one time where I bit the baby’s finger — I wonder what else I did when pictures weren’t being taken.
Most of the time, I behaved “nicely” as was expected of girls in the 1950s.
Dad worked long hours and Mom scrimped and saved so they could buy a house but they never showed the strain of this in any photos I have of those years. They always stopped and posed, smiling.
In 1954, when I was four and my brother was two, we moved into a recently built home in a brand-new subdivision .
Years rolled by with my brother doing “boy things” and me “girl things”. He did the usual teasing that younger brothers do and I reacted by crying which was expected for girls. Mom would come running and scold him but that never stopped him from irritating me.
Seven years after my first brother, Mom had a second son and things changed radically.
At nine, I didn’t know what was ahead of me.
Two and a half years pass. When I was 12, Mom had a boy again. My shoulders slumped when Dad told us. “Another brother. More of the same chores,” I muttered under my breath. “Changing his diapers, rocking him to sleep and babysitting the two boys at no pay.” Sure, my eldest brother was there but he was no help. When the baby was sick, he only stood at the bedroom door and called, “What a mess. Clean up the vomit.” I was the one who rocked him back to sleep.
Mom returned to work evenings, when I was 15 and life was altered again. I became the second mom to my two youngest brothers. I had become a “mini adult”.
It was as if we kids were in two separate families. My eldest brother and I were in one, then there was a gap of seven years before my two younger brothers came along.
At 20, in my third year at university, I left home to escape the expectations that society and Dad had for me — and for two additional reasons — so I could hang onto the self I had just found and return to the relationship I had with my dad when I was 17.
Five years later, I moved to a bigger city to find new opportunities.
Do I have the qualities of a firstborn? I think so …
I’m more independent than any of my brothers. All have/ had jobs and I’ve been self-employed for 40 years.
I’m a leader. From the late 1970s until the 1980s, I was a trailblazer in the field of technology.
I’m goal-oriented. I NEED to set a goal to have a reason for being.
I’m a high achiever. I always won the spelling bee in elementary school. Do they still have them? Have I shown my age?
Bossy, who me? My brothers will tell you that I am.
Unlike a firstborn (or any of my brothers), I’m adventurous and a risk taker evidenced by the fact that I’ve been an entrepreneur for 40 years, travelled to Australia and New Zealand as well as many other places, and at one point lived and worked in San Francisco.
For all I know, I don’t have kids because I already had them in my two brothers. It’s possible.
Do I like being the oldest? I didn’t have a choice. Better to be positive than negative about it.
The only thing I would change is to have had a sister — not to replace any of my brothers but I wish Mom would have had another girl. I sometimes have a yen for one.
