Sibling Lovalry

Well, now you’ve “met” the two wonderful people who created this angel wink but I wasn’t the only Wilde to exit my mother’s womb. A brother arrived two years before me, then two sisters followed, one year and ten years later.

Brother

My brother is exactly two years and five days older than me. We share a birthday month but not the same zodiac. His universe is not defined by signs nor birth right order nor rules of society. He’s a drummer boy and a mama’s boy equally. He can be stinking stubborn, but he loves unconditionally, in fact I’m not sure I’ve ever met another man who can so openly love. I don’t think he loves himself as easily although the quick wit and humor might tell you otherwise. He makes my kids laugh without even trying.

He secured the title of Marine when he was 18. I remember watching the news in my high school library when Operation Desert Storm sent three ships to the Middle East, my brother aboard one of them. He couldn’t tell us he was deployed until he was, and by then I was watching a graphic overlay of the Persian Gulf, being told by news reporters my big brother was entering enemy territory. I was a pretty naïve teen but something warned me through that screen, “You’ll never see your brother again.” I brushed it off like I did everything and kept my mind busy with booze and boys ‘til the arrival of his overseas letters.

The first time we met him at the airport in his dressed blues, my heart swelled as big as his deltoids. Who was this man? Because you see, the brother I knew, the brother I grew up with… the brother who just texted me as I am writing this! That brother, he comes out to play still, he laughs at himself, he makes everyone around him join in, just ask my kids, he’s contagious. Humorously and lovingly contagious.

We played silly games as kids, like Sandwich and Facemask. We slid down the stairs on couch cushions and dropped each other down the laundry chute. He dissected a gardener snake in his bedroom one time; I thought it was cool. The science project and his bedroom, I liked to hang out in there when he wasn’t around. I rewound his cassette tapes for him, Side 1 first then Side 2, not realizing. I snooped through his drawers and his drawings. I tugged the beaded metal strings on the three fluorescent beer signs illuminating red and blue racecars adorned on wallpaper. I discovered plenty of good stuff in his closet, including a galaxy of indents from bb gun pellets shot from the gun he held, sitting on his bed, back against the wall.

When our parents divorced, he and I became close again. When he returned after the Marines, we became close again. We always seem to find each other, but neither of us was/is afraid to get lost in the bottle. I’ve held him in fits of rage and laughed with him for hours.

I love everything about my brother, except the parts he beats up, but he has always protected me. He used to build me Barbie houses out of record albums for walls and towels for furniture. He was the coolest guy I knew. He IS the coolest guy I know. I hope he takes better care of himself because he’s getting older, and toxins linger. I wish he could tell them adios because he’s a rock star and everyone adores him.

Sister #1

A sister was born one year and one day after my birthday. People thought we were twins even through college, not because we looked alike or possessed similar personalities but I suppose because we did everything together and before that, our mother dressed us in same outfits of different color.

Playing Barbies and House were our full-time jobs, sometimes coloring in a fort, can’t forget School, or Police, roller skating parties, kickball, walking around town, swinging around handrails at the Catholic church three blocks down the gravel road right next to the grade school.

Our innocence depleted with hormones and tragedies, or so they seemed more so to her than to me. I still find interest in how our parents’ divorce affected each of us differently. While I rebelled, my sister turned responsible. She was a goody who worked hard on her studies and piano, who didn’t drink or sneak out despite my coaxing.

We ended up in college together, big surprise, and had our most fun since the Barbie days. She moved to Denver when I was in grad school, but I drove the ten hours at least once a month first to party at downtown dance clubs until priorities switched when her daughter joined our threesome.

I moved to the east coast and we saw each other less often, immersed in completely different worlds. She, a badass parole officer marrying an asshole; me, a Manhattan review writer getting haircuts and massages for free. I was hobnobbing with Park Avenue big wigs while she was cleaning Colfax trash off the street. To say the least, we led and still do lead very different lives, but differences don’t matter when you are sisters who grew up together.

We drifted our own ways for a while but have been floating back to each other getting closer again each time. We’ve both been experiencing this thing known as a mid-life crisis, which I have decided to refer to as a mid-life review, so our journeys have been realigning and it’s been helpful to be on this journey together.

My sister always seemed to carry a heavier heart, yet she exerts more independence and strength than I could ever muster, but she can beat herself up to extremes. Her heart wants to help everyone but wrangles her into situations she can barely back out of.

Where duty and order prevailed, she’s now learned the mastery of not giving a shit what people think, and I think that’s honorary. She throws words with no filter and wrinkles her nose at things she despises. She laughs with her mouth open while her green eyes twinkle with happy tears. She’s a voluptuous statue of beauty and autonomy.

She gets shit done. She’s tough. She’s fiercely loyal. She doesn’t take shit from anyone. She stands her ground. She tells you how she feels. She loves to laugh and have fun. She drags herself out of bed every morning to make her magic happen. She tolerates stupid people and isn’t afraid to speed.

She has way more determination than me.

Sister #2

Mom gifted Sister #1 and me with fake Cabbage Patch dolls when our baby sister was born. All we wanted to do was name her, change her, feed her, clean her, rock her, burp her, anything we could do with her. While one held the real baby, the other tended to the fake twins. We wanted to be the mommies, and we were, until we reached puberty.

Sister #2 came when I was ten, still playing pretend but verging towards teen-hood. Our “real live baby” learned to talk and walk before any toddler should.

Constant attention took a hairpin turn to “leave me alone” when driving revved up my freedom. Being ignored by sisters intrigued with boys and friends and sports and partying and working and not returning from school nights ‘til the late hours.

She didn’t grow up in the childhood home we did. She didn’t grow up with close siblings like we did, now off to the Marines, off to high school activities, off to college, off to cities. She was left to carve her own way, and that she did but got sidetracked by loneliness, leading to depression and anxiety, finding herself as a mother at the ripe age of 15.

High school and normalcy were not her ways. She learned through experience but doesn’t mean that doesn’t take a toll, one that can spiral you into a black hole you have to crawl and scrape to save yourself, and she has.

She can tell you more about an engine than most men. She can operate a locomotive train in the middle of a star-kissed night with wind chills creeping. She can sodder bits of pieces of parts of scraps of gears of things of time to about anything and turn them into something authentically cool.

My second sister and I have grown closer now that we’re older, sometimes feeling like she’s caught up and even excelled me at living wholly. She grew up quickly.

Her musical talent bubbles below a surface of self-doubt developed over years of deep-seeded issues, but she’s jumping off that circus train, working on herself with more intention than I’ve seen in years. It’s good to see her light up again, I can only imagine how it must feel on the inside.

My kids call her Grandma without even catching themselves.

We drove home early last December together to join the 800 people who attended our mutual friend’s funeral. History of families and friends and neighbors and stories of time swirled into the heart-wrenching celebration of a great man’s life.

I saw my sister blossom within the situation rather than wilt away, which she wanted to do but made herself fight through the feelings. Had she not stood up for herself to herself she would not have ended the last evening embracing and serenading the mother of our friend, who swayed and smiled and cried to a beautiful delivery of Me and Bobby McGee. We all cried.

he gave the mother a small gift of comfort, and release, and sometimes that’s all one needs, an encouraging nudge to ignore reality. She's good at that.

It excites me to see where she grows from here.