"When you have a second baby instead of sending you home with the baby blanket they should cloth you in a black and white stripped referee shirt." I think a whistle would be a great addition. It might break through the arguing over who's book that really is! And why someone haaaassss to go into someone else's room.
In the sixties we just hit each other. We knew nothing of 'validating feelings' or 'communication skills'. Goodness to have feelings validated you definitely need communication skills and that just wasn't something the Pope prescribed before adding one more sibling to my Mid Western Catholic family. Emotional bandwidth, financial resources, new shoes or a master plan were also not required and these unmentioned goals were indeed met.
I love my parents. I have to admit, it's easier to love my mother now that she's dead. She's more predictable and that's nice. The longer I'm a parent the more I understand them. My God, seven kids, mostly at home at the same time, "Calgon-Send-A-Trailer-And-Pick-Up-The-Pieces-That-Were-Me-And-Take-Me-Away!" I can't even imagine. I remember some of the madness, some of the magic.
I know I too will weather this time. And in turn it will weather me. They will continue to connect as I have done. Even today I email my sister as she quilts in Nebraska, my sister as she grandparents in New York, my brother as he grieves his son's passing, my sister as she sits with my father, my brother as he leaves a meeting in Ohio and my sister as she cleans her neighbors garage in a small German village and know that we made it, through the fighting I mean. Scarred, scrappy and loving each other even though my mother didn't have a referee shirt or a whistle.
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.i recently realised that ..for sure..my 12 year older brother and 10 yr older sister had a completely different experience with the same parents as I had. I was young when my parents were in their mid 40s and 50s,60s and beyond. They had not exactly expected to grow their family..and were well onto other things by the year of my birth. ive always known how to interrupt. whats just coming to light however..is that i am finally having my own memories,instead of adopting the memories of my siblings or my parents,as the way it was. For example, my brother and sister had a great and amazing time living in Europe when they were teens, going off to lovely villas with diplomats children and getting invited to lavish parties,while I was just 4 and frightened,lonely, confused,left all day in a foreign school with only a foreign language spoken to me from people I did not know..in a class room full of much older children..and no one thought anything of it, month after month. I was always told I did fine..but my family wasnt there at school with me..how did anyone know I WAS FINE..I COULD HARDLY EXPRESS MYSELF.I was so terrified of the nuns. I was barely speaking English, let alone Italian and Portuguese .i never really thought about how awful that experience must have been..but now that I have raised 3 children past 4..I know how hard that must have been for such a sensitive little girl as i was...and i am just now recognizing my truth . but the point is i am finally knowing that i did not have the same experience at all. All the family happy memory chatter about it does not apply to me. Im 53, and it has taken all these years to see this, many years past my parents deaths. Thats one of the more interesting things to talk to siblings about,not only who were our parents to you, how did you see them but also what were your individual memories,and how did they differ? learning to stop making assumptions and really go into your memory and spend the time to bring up the real personal recollection..its amazing how i had forgotten myself and allowed others to fill in the blanks for me, probably just because i was so much younger all the time and classically stoic by nature, and was accustomed to being told what to do, including what to remember of our collective experiences. big curtain being pulled aside.
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