Sibling Rivalry

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Since the days of Cain and Abel, across generations, cultures, ethnicities, bathroom counters, and dinner tables, siblings have been at odds. Oldest children compete to maintain their rightful place at the top of the proverbial food chain, and youngest children learn to claw their way up from the bottom of the pile (sometimes literally).

When K was first born, she was a novelty, something R could show off to other people. I don’t think he thought of her so much as an actual person, but as a possession that belonged solely to him. He proudly introduced her as “my baby-sister-girl.” This lasted approximately 6 hours. Then K dared to make noise and require the attention of HIS parents, and from then on, he referred to her as “that baby” or pretended she wasn’t in the room.

During the first several months of K’s life (usually when he wanted our undivided attention), R would dramatically say, “THIS is why I didn’t want a sister.” He also told us that he would have preferred a sister who wasn’t a baby, one that could play toys with him.

Of course, K eventually got old enough to play with toys. However, much to R’s disappointment, she wanted to play with HIS toys, but never in the way that he wanted her to. Before she could walk, R would gather up all of the toys within her reach and move them. K would holler with indignation, but since she was immobile, it was futile until J or I came to her rescue. Now that K is walking, she seems to be making up for lost time.

I was in the kitchen the other night fixing dinner when I heard an ear-piercing scream coming from the living room. I turned the corner to find a scene straight out of the World Wrestling Federation. K had ahold of a chunk of R’s hair in one fist, while she stubbornly wrestled with her brother over a plastic car with the other. At her mercy, R crawled along behind her in an attempt to ease the pressure on his scalp. This created the visual impression that her tiny frame was dragging him across the living room floor. I intervened before any bald patches resulted.

My kids compete for toys, attention, couch space, and food. (Like the time I caught R eating the baby puffs off of K’s high chair tray when I wasn’t looking. No wonder she was still hungry. My husband, a second child himself, likes to tell the story about hiding sausage links in his sock drawer so that his older brother wouldn’t eat them all.)

As a first-born, I think I tend to sympathize with R. After K was born, despite the fact that I desperately loved her, I felt incredible guilt over the idea that I had ruined R’s life. After all, we first-borns don’t appreciate it when our universes are altered. J is usually in K’s corner because he is accustomed to looking at sibling relations through the eyes of someone whose best bet was, in his words, “to get down on the ground as quickly as possible because I was going to end up there anyway.”

In spite of their differences, R is his sister’s greatest defender. At Christmastime, we were in a department store at the check out counter. K was strapped into her stroller, happily playing with a sticker that she had been given. A little boy, probably around two-years-old approached her stroller, poked her in the chest and attempted to take the sticker out of K’s hands. R witnessed this transgression and marched over to the little boy. “Nobody touches my sister,” he said before the boy’s mother noticed and retrieved her son.

I’ve heard it said that siblings are the only people who get to know you for your entire lifespan. Not even parents or spouses usually know you from beginning to end. In this way, siblings are like a link from your past to your future self. No one else knows all of the embarrassing, humiliating stories from your childhood (and delights in retelling them) or the triumphs and tribulations of your adolescence. Siblings witness your graduations (sometimes grudgingly), your wedding, and the births of your children. They are our history keepers.

I look forward to the first time K calls R from college because she got a speeding ticket or got busted for underage drinking (not that this has happened to anyone I know), to ask him, “On a scale of one to ten, how mad do you think Mom and Dad are going to be when they find out?” I hope that in that moment, both will appreciate the gift they have been given in one another. And when they’re arguing over which nursing home to put their father and me in, the Econo-Care Lodge or The Four Seasons Geriatric Edition, I pray that each only remembers the times that I sided with them.