June 10, 2015

Is one the loneliest number?

Or is it the perfect number?

I have a half dozen friends who were onlies and happy about it. Half a dozen others who wish they were onlies, and dozens more who are glad they had siblings.

PiC always wanted a crowd. I wanted none. Or rather, I was open to the idea of raising kids generally but never felt the urge to procreate. Adoption always seemed like a better way to go but, either way, having a family of humans wasn’t imperative.

It’s decidedly disconcerting to be pondering this mere months after having LB but it started as a practical question. We do have to figure out what to do with the pregnancy clothes and new baby accoutrements and with very little storage space, the question becomes even more pressing.

Now that we’re on the other side of a somewhat difficult pregnancy and survived a few months of a baby that hated sleeping, neither of us are under any illusion that having a baby is fun. There are rewarding moments, absolutely, and it is true that the first time (and pretty much all subsequent times) your child sees you and is so pleased ze grins like a loon is something else. It’s pretty awesome figuring out how to extract baby giggles, too.

But the survival of all involved is no mean feat either.

The physical demands: We’re not young anymore. All nighters were terrible when youth was on my side, they’re far worse now.
The emotional demands: We solely existed as parents in these months, there’s no time or energy to be partners and adult individuals. And that’s exhausting in a whole other way. The first time ze went to sleep and stayed asleep even after being put in bed, we had no idea what to do with ourselves. (We ended up having dinner and a conversation.)
Financially, good grief. Diapers, and wipes, and hiring help. Breastfeeding was a must for LB’s health and saving money but despite having it really easy compared to some, it was chemically difficult. When I was tired (All The Times) feeding or pumping triggered a serious dopamine drop and a wave of depression overtook me. I had to talk myself off a ledge every time. I even started a Twitter hashtag to distract myself from the awful feelings. Still I provided the bulk of hir nutrition because formula is so expensive.

This may sound coldhearted but on the point of sheer exhaustion alone, before we consider how hard the pregnancy was the first time, neither of us are inclined to do this again.

And yet, strange twist. Despite my own life experience, despite always ranking sibling fighting alongside death and taxes (all are certain, all suck), there is a part of me that wants LB to have a companion who could, for as long as they’re inclined to be around each other, be there to reminisce about childhood things that they’d not share with anyone else.

I can’t do that now because my sibling is, bluntly, a shit. He almost always has been but in 30+ years, we did have 2-3 years when we got along and shared that bond. This isn’t a glass half full thing, that made his later choices a far worse betrayal, but I can’t deny that I did get to have that relationship for a short time. Later, his mental issues complicated things further. Much like having gotten a couple good years with my parents before life fully hit the skids, it reminds me that though I loved and lost, LB isn’t necessarily doomed to the same fate. Some people do get to enjoy good relationships with their parents. Some people do get to share life with their sibling in a positive way. Knowing that, there’s a small part of me that wonders if I’d be depriving hir of one of the most important relationships ze could have.

Looked at another way: having this sibling was hugely formative. Would I be who I am today if I had had the older brother I yearned for? If he’d been someone who excelled and applied his numerous talents, someone who looked out for me and guided me professionally? Would I be half as strong if I hadn’t had to learn how to act both as my own advocate as well as kick my own butt to forge a road of my own? Life could have been so much easier if he worked alongside me to support our parents but would I have had the same fire and determination to grow my career to this point so that I’d have the freedom to live a real life, the ability to choose to put my family first? Or would the easier road have left me softer, somewhat less ambitious, more willing to accept less because there was a safety net rather than a chasm gaping at my heels?

Maybe I would have. But I suspect that I would be a much different, much less successful, much less driven person.

I was a born follower. I always wanted to follow big brother and so follow him I did, right through a morass of trouble and back to safety and, never incidentally, punishment. Every time. My heart was not adventurous, my dreams were nightmares, and rarely did it occur to me that there was more to life than the books I devoured. I needed someone to follow and, as charisma and vision were his domains, I would have trundled along after him like an ant following a chemical trail. Without his failures, without a big push, I might still just be following.

He always wanted a brother so he did his best to remake me in that image, manipulating me into doing his dirty work like killing the spiders, climbing fences and other stereotypically boy escapades. Scion of a matriarchal family, I was a born scrapper but I learned to throw a real punch fighting with him. And fight we did, physically and emotionally, for nearly all of our lives. Bullies, wanting a bit of superiority marked me, all bookwormy and solitary, as an easy target only to rapidly retreat when I gave as good as I got. In the process of making me his “little brother”, he preyed on my every weakness, teaching me that the very existence of fear was a soft underbelly you never showed people. To this day, I won’t confess aloud that anything scares me because that’s an invitation to be pounced on.

High school was the first time I had to make my own way and my 12-year-old knees trembled at the unfamiliar ahead of me. Mom scraped up the cash to send him to private school, worried that he’d fall in with the wrong crowd at the public school, but as the academic and responsible kid, I was on my own. That was the first time that distinction between us had been made so clearly and that would follow us the rest of our lives. I often wondered how much of the family joke, subverting the usual expectations assigned to birth order that I would be the successful one and he’d depend on me, was a self fulfilling prophecy and how much was merely an accurate read of our characters.

The truth is, in many ways, my sibling’s inability to cast a shadow was as influential in forming the person I am as anything my parents instilled in me. I learned from them: facts, figures, morality. But I became more by pushing away from him, from our friction, in my need to redeem our family reputation.

Many people take comfort in their siblings.  I am grateful when an encounter with him doesn’t give me weeks of nightmares. So it’s perhaps strange that I seemingly credit him with some large part of who I am. But it only seems fair to say that adversity tempered me and boy howdy did he throw challenges my way.

It’s not a theorem that can be solved for the best possible outcome. Much as I abhor math, I’d be working those numbers in a heartbeat if it could be done. So many “what ifs” crowd together: What if LB is like my sibling (terrible)? What if a future second kid is that awful person? What if LB would do so much better with a sibling?

All I can do is hope we do a good job with LB and have a LOT of help if we try again.

What say you? If you had them, were your siblings a joy or a bane? If you didn’t, did you wish for them? Or are you glad you dodged a bullet?  How does that inform your choice to have or not have kid(s)?