Sibling (Dis)Order

I'm the oldest child in my sibling quintet.  As a teenager that meant that I was in charge of keeping the peace, babysitting until the parents returned from work and was trained in the art of diaper changing twice. In many ways the uber responsible, family container, role of the oldest child fits me well.  As each of us age however, the assumptions I had about the middle child and youngest child stereotypes and those about the oldest (me), have proved false. Maybe my notions were incorrect to begin with or maybe my siblings are uncharacteristically awesome (the likely answer). All I know is that I frequently feel like I am the younger sib.

Visiting with my sister this weekend, I was reminded of these thoughts and feelings. I am filled with pride, which sometimes tiptoes into jealousy when I am with her. The middle child who was "supposed" to get lost in the shuffle is now a power house of a woman who routinely loses other people in her dust.

Likewise, my baby brother, who by most standard sibling order articles could be the slacker of the family without anyone batting an eyelash, is instead a dynamo.  He is an amazing dad, marathon runner, justice fighting, superhero type dynamo. 

All four of my siblings prove that it is not birth order that defines us.  There is some cosmic cocktail of when and where we are born, to whom, with what resources, and how we respond to all those ingredients that lays claim to us. How we respond is the mystery piece that intrigues me most.  The resilience factor. 

I look at my own kids today and remind myself that the older brother/younger brother images do not consider the cosmic cocktail. The assumptions and predictions can not forecast the inner spark that exists in them or the paths that they will discover.  I keep reminding myself that imposing my own hopes on my kids is futile.  They will be who they are going to be - taller or smarter or more creative than some, shorter, dumber and less than others.  It's really pointless to compare.  It was pointless for me at 16 and it's even more so now, 30 years later.  Encourage, affirm, nurture.  Helping my kids figure out who they are, what they're good at, and how they thrive is what matters. That's what needs to matter for me, for myself, too. Birth order, not so much.

You Can't Go Back

I am enjoying a week of sibling reunification and nostalgia.  As part of our time together we took a drive to Gary, IN to visit some of our former homes.  The pictures here are a sampling of our trip and proof of the old adage, "you can't go back".  Two of the three homes that we lived in while in Gary are now abandoned and uninhabitable.  It was such a weird feeling to see the outline of happy, familiar memories and have the "heeby jeeby" tingle going up my spine because I was expecting a drug addict or wild, rabid dog to jump out from the wide-open door, pulled from its hinges.  

today

1977

1982

today

The homes themselves seemed so much smaller.  We all say that when we go back and look at places from our childhood they look so much smaller than we remembered, forgetting that we ourselves were smaller and therefore everything else looked big from our perspective.  Walking around yesterday, it was more than that though.  The homes literally looked like they had shrunk.  To check, I pulled some old photos to compare and they really do look smaller today.  Changed landscaping or just overgrown shrubs and grasses that have swallowed the size of the home, missing awnings and planters have all diminished the appearance.  A part of me wonders if every home shrinks when a family leaves.  I imagine a vacuum pack sealer sucking out the laughter at birthday parties, the late night kisses goodnight, the puppies being born in the backyard, the strawberry patches and graduation open houses.  The day my family moved out of these homes we stepped out and closed the door and moved forward to the next place.  Pulling away, did we hear the slow, steady, slurping sound of all those moments and memories being extracted, leaving only the vacuum packed house address?

This leaves me with the very helpful take away, I can't go back but I can move forward and inhabit the space I'm in.  Every day that I manage to be present and live fully in the moment, I picture myself filling the space of my current home.  Hopefully my boys will look back on their home one day and think to themselves, "I remember it being so much bigger!" 

The Same Gene Pool?

I frequently marvel at how different my two sons are.  Extroverted vs. introverted.  Physical vs. verbal.  Structured vs. free flowing.  This weekend one was shoveling mulch into garden beds, for a neighbor, for 7 and 8 hours a day and the other was creating a blog focusing on book reviews. They were born to the same parents, less than two years apart, and have lived in the same environment, and attended the same schools their whole lives. 

Sibling differences are also on my mind because all of my siblings have come to visit me this week.  The variety of twists and turns our lives have taken also provides some serious contrasts in our personalities and life styles.  The age span among us is such that I was sometimes mistaken as a teen mom when my youngest sister was born.  My family moved every 2-3 years for the bulk of my childhood, middle siblings know only three homes instead of my six and younger siblings were raised in multiple homes and with different parental arrangements.  The mystery for us is how it is that we could still be so much alike. It goes beyond the facial features or shared jokes.  There is a sensibility, a common reality that was endured/experienced even though many parts of our childhood were not the same.

View towards Michigan City from Mt. Baldy, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are about to leave and meet up with another brother who currently lives near our old haunts.  We are about to intentionally revisit the old homes that we lived in and some of the "favorite memories".  When we started creating the list of things that we wanted to share together, I was amazed at how unusual the list was.  Broasted chicken from the deli at the local grocery or dinner at the steakhouse chain that we hated and where three of the five of us had high school jobs. It was the only restaurant that we ever went to as a family because on our birthdays you could eat free (if you worked there) and your guests could eat half off.  The perfect meal plan for a family of 7 + 2 foster kids.  A trip to a local park that had a real tank that we would climb on like a jungle gym also made the list.  Our favorite thing and the one that we all mentioned was going on a trip to Mt. Baldy at the Indiana Dunes.

I warned my sibs that Mt. Baldy is in the midst of serious erosion problems.  The dune is literally swallowing up the forest at it's base and changing it's own form.  I'm sure that when we arrive there later today it will be like meeting and spending time with each other.  Different and yet so very familiar.

Happy Sad 70th birthday

At one o'clock yesterday I looked down at the time stamp on my pc and saw 6/25/12.  A moment of happy recognition separated a millisecond later by sadness.  The anniversary of my mom's birthday. There was happiness that she was born and a flash at birthday celebrations of the past and then the immediate realization that the celebration would be limited to my internal thoughts. There was also a moment of appreciation that the loss of her physical and regular presence in my life does not overwhelm me on a daily basis anymore.  But neither does it go away. 

Later on I saw Facebook updates from my siblings and they reminded me that she would have been 70 years old.  I tried to imagine her at 70.  Wise and gentle for sure. Amazing grandmother and my own personal advice columnist. I was taken by the wistful longing that each of my sibs shared for our mom.  Their quiet grief hit me harder than her absence.  So much depth of feeling.  We do such a great job of being strong and confident and getting on with our lives.  Each of the five of us have important things going on and are productively walking forward each day.  The brief lifting of the veil was crushing.  It hit me so hard.  The "what ifs" washed over me in a wholly unhelpful way. The great celebration of her life is that thinking of her I'm not able to despair or stay depressed for long.  Her hokey/pithy statements gently scream,

"If life gives you lemons make lemonade."
"God doesn't make junk."
"When a door closes, God opens a window."

I love you.

Space and Sharing

My post, Attachment Parenting, left me going down memory lane a bit.  I realized, as I looked back, that our early decisions to practice attachment parenting extended to many more intentional decisions even as our kids started to grow up.  Shared space in the form of a sling or a bed turned into a shared bedroom, shared toys, one family computer, and one television.  Interestingly enough, these very simple choices sometimes felt just as counter cultural as having a home birth.

For Christmas one year we made the earth shattering decision  to purchase a Game Boy for the boys.  It felt like a life changing moment for our family.  Choosing to buy only one and have both boys share it was our way of keeping our little team in balance.  I remember the day after Christmas when they told their friends what they had gotten.  I felt a twinge of guilt for not giving them each their own and then I heard my son say, "It's ok, cuz I'm good at the jumps and he's good at finding the treasures.  So we are going fast through the levels."

Pokemon and Game Boy of the past. (Photo credit: heath_bar)

Those stupid video games had them going to the store and negotiating which new game they would purchase, returning to trade old, conquered ones for a new challenge.  They needed to come to consensus on each acquisition or spend 100% of their own money on a game that they could only play when the other person was otherwise occupied. Even with our imposed limits they managed to be obsessed by the images on the four inch screen.  We were far from Amish and yet I still felt like I was out of the normal range of accepted U.S. parenting practices.  I felt out of sync because I was resisting the consumption driven culture.  How dare I not purchase as much as possible for my children.  How dare I make them wait for the latest game until they could buy it for themselves or find it used or for trade, 6 months later.

We bought the Game Boy because we wanted to do something special for our children. We wanted to indulge one of their kiddie desires. We minimized how much it could control our lives by insisting that our sons shared it and by limiting when they could use it - 10 hour car rides to South Dakota -YES!; parties at friends' homes - NO!  We aren't carrying them in a sling anymore but we are still trying to find ways that we can share space and stuff as a family.

It changes over time but there is always something, at every developmental age, that ends up forcing us to decide what is right for our family.  Now, there are nights when we are all within 10 feet of each other but on a different screen -, tv, computer, ipod.  I'm grateful that we decided to have the screens only on the first level of our house and I'm grateful that we have one tv that requires us to negotiate/talk/argue. Now that we have teenagers it feels like we are starting to reap the benefits of our families' counter cultural revolution.  I'm glad that we are still attached and sharing space.

Attachment Parenting

Let The War Begin! (Photo credit: dog.happy.art)

When I was pregnant for the first time, I knew one specific thing was going to be a part of my role as mother and that was breastfeeding.  My own mother had breastfed all of her five children and it felt very normal, almost a non-issue.  We bought many things in preparation for the new baby, a crib, car seat, and stroller, but no bottles.  To my surprise and deep frustration, the one thing that I had no worries or insecurities about, became a huge struggle.  My son would not nurse for any significant amount of time for the first month of his life.  The most natural part of mothering, for me, turned into a torturous routine of prepping and prodding, ultimately failing with my son only taking a small fraction of what he would need, and then pumping to offer later via a bottle.  There was intense fatigue, infections, and numerous consultations with our midwife and lactation specialists.  It was humbling to say the least.   Breastfeeding was the one thing that I had been calm and confident about.  Instead, I was left wondering what I was doing wrong.

Fourteen years later, the Time magazine cover, "Are you mom enough?", hit a nerve. I struggled to understand what the cover and subsequent flurry of public commentary meant to me.  When I was bleary eyed and brain dead from exhaustion the last thing that I needed was public scrutiny and judgement.  It felt like that cover photo was landing a blow on breastfeeding in general, not just those who breastfeed past the cute, defenseless time of infancy.  I have my own opinions about breastfeeding older children but my biggest theory is that as Americans, we are becoming more and more uncomfortable with lifestyles that promote emotional closeness, reject excessive consumerism, and allow for individuality.  It doesn't matter that a large part of the world shares a bed or at least a bedroom with their child(ren), in the U.S. it's suspect.  It doesn't matter that children all over the world are able to live with very little resources, in the U.S. our children's greatest gift is to help us stimulate the economy with purchases for "healthy development", "enrichment", and "stimulation".  Less is more is heresy.

Sleeping Angels (Photo credit: Cavalier92)

One of the big issues for our family around attachment parenting was the use of a sling for carrying and our (various mutations) shared sleeping quarters.  My boys were toddlers and walking competently when we stopped using the sling. The toddler moved to a sidecar bed when the new baby came and then they shared a bed in their own room as they both transitioned out of our room at two and four. We received many comments, even from people we love, about how we needed to stop babying them. I was resentful at the time that we could be judged for damaging our children or limiting their capacity for independence when they were notably smart, creative, and very confident.  When I would evaluate whether we were doing the right thing, it was never the boys that gave proof that we should change course, it was me. Attachment parenting was hard for me.  There were many days when I wasn't sure how much longer I could stay healthy and maintain the routine of physical closeness.  The choices we made were never as planned out or as calculated as I may have liked.  We moved one day to the next, loving our kids and trying desperately to do what seemed right for them.  What was good for one wasn't the same for the other, and our plans and intentions were always being tweaked. 

So the cover, and the public debate, stirred those early years up for me.  My own experience tells me that what I think will be easy or least manageable, frequently becomes a surprising struggle.  Other things that I never even planned can come to feel natural.  The one thing that remains constant is the love part.  There are happy kids who were fed formula and "Ferberized" and there are happy kids who were breastfed and slept in a family bed.  The happiness comes from families who are genuinely doing there best to meet their child's unique needs and doing that in love.  We don't need to pick sides and label one group of families as "normal"  or "ideal" and demonize others.  A different style of parenting doesn't need to feel like a challenge to your own.  Make the choices that meet the needs of your child, your family, and you.  Making choices based on what works or doesn't work for someone else may be a fun debate topic but it's not good for families.

Turning Point - Give Me Twenty

I know that I tend to turn most of these reflections towards the positive or to search out some type of personal learning.  I don't do that because everything is happy all the time but more as a way to practice looking for the good.  I'm not able to manage it most of the time but in my writing, I can.  There was a time in my family when I found it very hard to be upbeat.  My youngest son seemed to be angry and combative all the time, he fought with his brother every waking moment, called him terrible names, and I thought that maybe some type of intervention was going to be necessary.

Where was all the anger coming from?  How could I tell if he was going through a phase or showing some early signs of serious struggles?   My best friend gave me a piece of very sage advice.  She pointed out to me that my son wasn't acting the same all the time.  When we visited with friends for example, he didn't fight with them or call their children names.  He did have the ability to control himself and censure his behavior at times.  It helped calm my mind but I still didn't have a solution.  Our biggest response had been natural consequences, usually a withdrawal of some type of privilege that was linked to the offensive activity.  If he trashed his brother's room then he would have to clean it or do his brother's chores for several days.  Mostly though, his consequence was taking away TV time or time with his friend.  A favorite message in those days was, "You don't get to be rewarded with hanging out with your friend if you treat your family like crap."

an exercise of chest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is also the son who could spend hours in repetitive labor (sanding, heavy lifting, gardening).  There were moments when I felt like I couldn't listen to his negativity or anger one more second and yet if he had a job, that he deemed important, he could be focused and helpful.  Over time I realized that when he was most agitated and most deserving of a drop kick, was the exact time that I needed to give him a job. I met with several teachers back then, suggesting that as counter intuitive as it might seem from his actions, more responsibility in the classroom, not less, would help his classroom behavior.  As much as he liked to feel responsible, he also liked to feel strong.  As he was repetitively harassing  his brother, I would shout from the other room, "O.K., you've got too much energy for me right now.  Give me twenty!"  He would drop to the ground and do push ups.  To my surprise, he never fought me on my boot camp inspired demands.  As miserable as we all felt around him in those years, he felt just as bad.  He wanted a solution to his out of control behavior as much as we did.

In the midst of the worst of his negative, argumentative behavior, I asked him to join me as my workout buddy at the gym.  I had to lie to the YMCA about his age so that he could be permitted to use the equipment but it was worth it.  About 6 months after our gym routine had begun I looked at him and didn't see the anger.  "Do you feel different?   You don't seem as upset or on edge as you used to.  Have you noticed a change?"  I asked him.  He shrugged his shoulders and gave an understated, "Yea, maybe."

His intense attitude may have subsided all on its own just by getting older and allowing all the initial prepubescent stuff to settle down.  Maybe it was the physical exercise.  Maybe it was the two boys being separated and going to different schools.  Maybe it was just the realization that we weren't in a battle with our son as much as we were wrestling with his out of control feelings and behavior.  Maybe it was just a super lucky alignment of the stars and all of the things I just listed melding at the right moment.  So here is my reflection that I'm trying to remember for other things in my life:

1. When you are in the middle of a struggle it can be hard to see a solution.  Don't give up.
2. Being honest about the hard parts of our lives/parenting is so much easier than pretending that things    are "fine" and it's a lot less lonely.
3. When agitated, frustrated, antsy, or full out angry, push ups might help and definitely won't hurt.

Good luck with whatever your latest struggle is.  We all have them so you are in good company.

Mother's Day Preparations

Mother's Day card (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a couple of weeks,  a holiday that I don't have to do ANYTHING for will arrive with secrecy and hushed excitement.  Partners, prepare your children for Mother's Day.  It's one of the best ways to teach our children how to be great, compassionate, kind, thoughtful people.  Here's a composite flash on my special day over the years:

 I lie in bed listening to the boys bickering.  "Why did you put the toast in now?  It's going to be cold by the time everything else is ready."  The younger brother defends his place in the Mother's Day Preparations, "Well, you're ruining everything.  Why can't you let me just do it?  You're an idiot."

I beat back my urge to go downstairs and referee the cooking feud and roll over in the bed instead.  After quite a bit of clanging and more stage whisper name calling, I hear feet on the landing of the stairs.  Here we go.  Mother's Day.  Breakfast in bed.  One of my favorite family traditions.

The boys walk in with a tray of food, coffee, and sometimes a bud vase with one of our garden flowers.  They hand me cards first, then a present.  My husband hands me a card and present as well.  Sometimes there's even a card "from" our dog.  Lord knows he's my youngest baby.  Sometimes the presents are homemade.  Sometimes they are coupon books for services that the boys promise to offer at future dates.  Sometimes they are a shared effort of pooled allowance money and really shock me (a Shuffle for my gym workouts really took the cake one year).

There is a clear attempt at being nice to one another while I eat my breakfast.  They know that a day without bickering is the only present that I really want, any day of the year.  "Do you like the eggs?  I made the eggs."  I do like the eggs.   There is something very different about them.  Tomatoes, cheese, spinach(?), no it's lettuce, and something sweet...raisins?!  After my deduction, I respond, "I do like the eggs.  You put some of last night's salad in, didn't you.  I wouldn't have thought to do that.  It works though (it did, mostly)."

A version of this has happened for the last 13 years.  The first two years my husband did most of the cooking but once they were old enough to put bread in the toaster or open a cup of yogurt, they have come up the stairs with my breakfast.  I love Mother's Day because it is their day to really think about someone else (Father's Day too).  They know that there will be no card and present waiting for them after I open my surprises.  They are actively trying to think of things that I will like, or at least things that they can afford that I will also like.  That is why I like the over blown, Hallmark highjacked holiday of Mother's Day.  It is one of the first ways that my boys started to learn selflessness, kindness, generosity, and gratitude.

A good friend of mine told me that she instructed her husband to teach her son about Mother's Day.  She understood that her husband's love didn't always show up aligned with holidays or birthdays.  In spite of that, she wanted him to teach their son the importance of thinking of and caring for others.  "He won't know how to stay in a decent relationship if he doesn't get a chance to practice these practical ways of caring."  Amen!  I don't love scrambled eggs with lettuce and raisins.  I do love my 8 year old son "visioning" a gourmet, one-of-a-kind brunch for his mother - just to show her how much he cares.

Sibling Memories: Letting Them Go

Sibling! (Photo credit: Gus Dahlberg)

I've highlighted some of the fun moments that I shared with my siblings this past weekend and now feel like I need to be honest about one of the not so fun moments - at least for me.  It was when I had to confess my jerkiness to my brother and apologize. Family dynamics, birth order, reactions to grief, geographic distance, and just simply having different personalities, means that my relationship to each of my siblings is different.  Over time, relationships that were awkward can feel nonexistent or icy if they are not tended.  Such was the case for me.

As I sat enjoying the company of my two brothers and two sisters this past weekend, I had a mini epiphany.  Listening to stories of childhood moments, present day struggles and joys, and future hopes led me to the basic realization - we're all just doing our best.   There are things that I regret in my own life and mistakes that I've made.  My brother is the same.  I realized, as I sat listening to his hopes for his marriage and his conversations with his children, that I really owed him an apology.  In my own mind, I had been replaying a sequence of events between him and his family from over a decade ago, keeping him frozen in time.  It was embarrassing to own. 

It was humbling to see how small I could be and how easy it was for me to drift away from my brother.   I realized that I needed to let go of some of my memories.  Holding on to images of our younger selves, trying to find our way, sorting out our priorities, rebuilding our lives after major loss was not fair.  The real truth is that my aloof, emotionally distant approach to my brother was hypocritical.  My own behavior wasn't modeling anything healthy or loving.  Things happen in relationships that we regret, or that make us angry or sad.  We have to be vigilant and know what our memories are preserving.  Some memories we just need to let go of.

Can you imagine letting go of some of your memories - memories that are holding someone in your life in a freeze frame?  Or, if not let go, then allowing space for new memories to be added? 

Sibling Memories: Affirming the DJ

The Black eyed peas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the wedding this past weekend, I had a chance to eat great food, visit with family, soak up some beautiful sunshine and surf, and I got to dance.  Dancing is not necessarily something that I go out of my way to do.  I'm terribly self conscious about my limited repertoire of moves.  One of my favorite memories from the weekend though, will be dancing with my brothers and sisters at the wedding reception.  Four of the five of us were a bit nervous that we wouldn't have anything other than country music to dance to.  The fifth sibling enjoys the country but was also the mother of the bride and in high demand.  The dj played several country songs at the very beginning and we sat nursing our drinks.  No one else was dancing either so we didn't really stand out as a protest contingent.  Then out of nowhere we heard the beat of the Black Eyed Peas (I think that was what stirred us from our seats) and we charged the floor.  We danced by ourselves through three quarters of the song while others were begging and cajoling their friends to join in.

We broke open that dance floor.  Perhaps people saw how much fun we were having and felt jealous.  Perhaps people saw my moves and realized that they could look really great in comparison.  Who knows.  We stayed on the floor for a couple more songs and sat when the country came on.  Everyone else sat down too.  We decided that we would have to make a commitment - we had to affirm the dj in playing non-country music (sorry sis).  Whenever he played non-country we would get up and dance and give him positive reinforcement.  It's been a long time since I was just goofy like that - just hanging out with my group and cutting loose.  It was an extra rare treat that my group was my two brothers and my two sisters, a great memory.

I was in high school when my youngest sister was born.  My youngest brother lived with my husband and I over his college breaks.  The wide age span of my five siblings has meant that our relationships have taken very different shapes and hues over the years.  There were times when I felt more like a mother figure than sister.  In the present day, we are a very adult mix of work, relationships, debt, and health concerns and our decade and a half age span isn't all that significant.  We all too easily put people we love into categories, defining and limiting them to a narrow template.  Sometimes we take a template that's been put on us and resist acting beyond it's confines.  Big sister or oldest in the family are templates that I've held.  The great thing about the dance floor at the reception was that the five of us were just having fun.  All the templates were set down and we were just enjoying each other.  I've always liked the Black Eyed Peas and now I have a whole new reason to appreciate them.

Sibling Memories: Indian Paintbrushes

I just returned from my trip to Corpus Christi, TX where I attended the wedding of a niece.  The best part of the trip was that all four of my siblings were present at the wedding.  We converged on Texas from Washington, Illinois, Indiana, and Ontario, Canada.  Five years have passed since the last time we were all together.  There are so many thoughts and as one of my brothers commented, "There's a lot of fodder for your blog from this weekend."  Indeed.

As we started the drive from San Antonio airport to Corpus Christi we were all taken by the very different landscape.  Watching the cactus pop up along the roadside was foreign to all of us. We were all admiring the beautiful and unfamiliar wildflowers.  I can't remember the sequence of the conversation but I basically commented on a pretty flower, my youngest brother made a joke about pulling over to pick some, I said, "Don't offer unless you're really willing to make good on it."  Then, all of the sudden, my brother pulls over on the side of the highway and calls my bluff.  Next thing I know we're all spilling out of the SUV and making a mad dash to pluck coral colored blossoms.  I was actually a little nervous that some Texas Ranger was going to come upon us and arrest us all for poaching a part of their state.  (An idea planted by my one brother who was convinced that he wouldn't escape Texas without an arrest from one of the Rangers - it may just have been a fantasy).

Back in the car we gathered our individual efforts and had a very beautiful bouquet.  We drove the remaining two hours and found the church where the rehearsal and dinner would be that evening.  After dinner we returned to the car and found our lovely bundle had shriveled, wilted, in a word, died.  We found our way to the beach condo where we stayed and plopped them into a plastic cup of water.  It was sad and a little pathetic, looking at the pink cup of dead flowers.  I wish I would have taken a picture so that the rest of this story could be more dramatic.  We left to go down to the beach for a bonfire and returned probably two hours later to find the flowers in the photo.  My sister who has lived in Texas calls them Indian Paintbrushes.  The rest of my siblings thought that calling them Lazarus flowers might be appropriate too, (reference to Bible story about the man who rose from the dead).

The weekend was great.  It was great because we had a chance to make new memories instead of relying on a stash of old childhood stuff that we all remember differently anyway.  And in a very hokey way, it was good to bring our wilted relationships with one another back to life, dip ourselves in some cool water and draw upon that to rehydrate our connections.  Those flowers just kept offering themselves up to us, opening up even after being terribly neglected.  I am thinking about other people in my life that I might do the same.  I am thinking about people who I need to take on a road trip and pick some flowers with.  What are some of the ways that have helped you restore life to your relationships?