BROTHERS AND SISTERS

(Google Images, 2017)

Most of us have a sibling.  Worldwide statistics tell us that the average American woman is having a total of 1.87 children.  (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html), Yikes! how is that happening?  I suppose it is, if I remember correctly from statistics class: one woman may have 3 children, another 4 and the third only 1 and that averages out to 1.87 children based on the population of United States and women of child bearing age.  
Well my mom had 2 children, I have a little brother.
We are adults now and he has made some choices in his life that have shocked us all.  As a mother myself, I understand the process of raising a child and hoping and praying they will make correct choices, and sorrowing each decision that you know will lead to disaster.  That's what being a parent is all about.  It's a huge ordeal.  I always laugh when people offhandedly comment, " They had children for themselves."

Of course there is great joy with being parenting.  However, there is also great pain.  

I know I am a better person because I had children and I gained great character due to the situations and scenarios that parenting puts one in. Being a responsible person I stepped up to parenting with the idea that no one else would love my children as I do, therefore I am the best candidate to make sure they are launched as well rounded successful adults. 

Over the years I have had the opportunity to examine my own relationships in life and reflect upon the  mistakes I have made, some with my brother.   I should have been a better sister to him.  I know my parents had a lot to do with the way my brother and I got along.  They worked, left us alone, me being older I was often the babysitter, he was hyperactive and constantly busy, and routinely did not obey me.  
I was the older one, the one expected to set and example and thus reaped the blame when things went wrong.  Sometimes he was not to blame and other times he was.  However, I feel guilty at how the wrath of mom was exacted out on him instead of me who was at times truly the guilty party.  I told myself that he did get away with things making it easier to hide behind the door while he got spanked for something I instigated. 

As a family at Christmas time we traditionally watch "A Christmas Story "The plot revolves around Peter Billingsley acting out his Christmas wish of getting a BB gun.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/fullcredits

During the part where Ralphie says the F word then blames his buddy Schwartz, the guilt sets in. Further,  Ralph's' mother (played by Melinda Dillion), calls Mrs. Schwartz on the phone and one can hear poor Schwatzie getting an unexpected beating for influencing Ralph's speech.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KjxFDGFKhk,

As we age I don't feel so much guilt. I have found our childhoods similar to many that were raised in our generation. I also understand it was our parents responsibility to govern the situations they put us into considering our ages, personalities and individual temperaments. As I mentioned, It was often my responsibility to babysit, when I simply wasn't mature enough to do so.  My brother performed behaviors such as disappearing at night!, confrontations with neighbor boys, and fighting with the girls next store that often fueled our clashes.  On one occasion our tit for that got so out of hand that he punched his hand through a plate glass window, laying out the skin to the bone on his knuckle. The neighbors took him to the hospital.  Of course I was punished. 
  

In my sophomore year of high school, we moved from California to the NW, renting while the folks decided where they wanted to buy.  Eventually buying a home  out of the school district I had already begun  to attend in.   I was faced with changing schools, again.  Having already made friends, (that in itself being a feat being the kid that was dragged across the map due to the circumstances surrounding our parents occupations), I chose to ride my bike to the bus stop so I could continue where I was.  

On one of many occasions it was raining. It was actually pouring rain. My routine was change at school before class.   I would arrive to the bus stop soaked to the skin and dry out on the ride to school. It was draining, not to mention ruined my early romance possibilities rocking that stringy wet hair. When I complained, My mother always chimed a tune that went like this "you wanted to ride your bike to that school! Its your choice." (as if she was faultless) On that occasion dreading the dark and rainy ride, arriving at school soaked again, I begged my mom to get up and take me.  I watched the time until none was to spare, her final word was putting her pillow over her head.  As I was riding up the long hill that our home was below, I saw my brother in the distance delivering his papers, (he had a paper route at 10! )  On that part of the hill I had to push my bike as it was too steep to ride it.  The rain was coming down in sheets and I was already wet, my jeans becoming dead weight.  
I then heard the sound of a car and began to move over to the side farther, looking I saw my mothers car struggling up the hill its diesel engine whining.   I thought,"what a great mom, she really does love me." (or something like that). When the car arrived at me it stopped and I moved towards it expecting to put my bike in the trunk, however, she got out and beat the living daylights out of me, got back in , turned the car around and went back down the hill." 
That's all I remember, the rest of the story was witnessed by my brother, who for the first time hinted at a bit of compassion for me. He picks it up,"Yeah I remember mom coming up the hill, I saw her get out and wail on you, you were on the ground and your bike was all crashed to the side,(he chuckles)." "You were kind of laying on it you didn't get up  Mom turned the car around and went back down the hill.  I thought, what did she do this time? You finally got back up and kept going, when you passed me you didn't say anything at all, I don't think you even saw me." I probably didn't. 

He hinted at his opinion, that I was a difficult child, I saw a chance to remind him of his escapades.  It levels the playing field, especially when our mom is present for those conversations.  She always says the same things, "I don't remember that" and as she gets older,"I am sorry for that." 

Being a parent who rarely spanked, I understand her emotions. Using spanking as discipline hurts the parent also.  It just doesn't seem right to raise a hand to a innocent child no matter what they have done.  However, I did it, on occasion when nothing else worked.  It's the spanking in anger to allow a child to make you angry, its wrong.  I fought that when I was a parent.  Learning to distinguish between disciplining in anger or being calm and loving, yet firm, by providing guidance through discipline. Being a student of child rearing I had a bevy of techniques. Being a good parent interested me to the extent I became employed professionally as a foster parent.   Often these children took behavior management medications and were one step away from an institution.  I learned  about attachment disorders and attention deficit and multiple personality disorders and depression and a myriad of problems that abused and neglected children suffer with.   I began to see myself in some of these kids, gaining a whole new respect for my own parents. They never gave up on us, or sent us away.   Sure my issues were because of their lack of child rearing skills, I don't think my mom had a class or even read a book, until she joined me at a foster parenting training course. 
She was also that generation: the ones that had a bar in the basement, cocktails after work in front of the fireplace, wine at dinner, and nightcaps.  
On weekends we went to the Yacht Club.  The folks, they danced and drank.  I smoked pot, in a dress, on boats, with other forgotten teens.  It was their way, their lives were most important, we kids were merely ornaments. A kind of a tribute to their fertility or a tradition they adhered to.  

Our parents were slightly younger than the generation that said,"Children were to be seen and not heard." That was their parenting example. Our step-dad was raised in the latter part of the depression, so there was a lot of frugality that hung on. Mom was quite a bit younger than he.  

Psychologically I believe our step-dad was done with raising kids when he met and our married mom.  He had already raised 2 twin daughters and was just not much of father to us.  His only desire was our mother, that was a fact, that he often made very clear.  

He loved his twins dearly but all that we got was the back of his hand.  

As with most step-dads he wasn't all bad, he bought me a guitar, it was a "classic". Very unlike the guitars most of my friends played, "it could be electric too!" he said.  The electric bar was crudely carved out and misshapen making this already monolithic piece of wood an embarrassment to an already out of sorts 13 year old.  When I tried to play it dwarfed me, all one could see was a head peeking above, and two little arms straining at the strings.  He'd get a few cocktails in him and call for me to play, my mom rescuing me by drowning me out with a massive classical concerto to my John Denver impression.  On the last strains of "Rocky Mountain High"  came  the great intro of "Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor Opus 18," and I would slip away unscathed.
  
My brother had his problems too. When it wasn't me who was home and the center of the tempest it was he.  I arrived home one evening to an already ongoing event; our Step-dad was chasing our mother with a belt cornering her in the bedroom and my brother was holding him off with a golf club. The marriage disintegrated after that.  Another step-dad came along yet, I was already gone to college and married.  Mom moved again leaving the tumult of the past behind.  
Happily I have my own family now and we have our own stuff to reminisces about.  Brother and sisters smile and hug.