On being the last to go!

Last week, I went back to where I started, in all of the right ways.

I love my siblings unconditionally. Fully. I treasure our time together, especially when in a place so close to our childhood home and with spouses and at least a few of the next generation or two in tow.

This past week, vacationing with my siblings and some of their families, we naturally gravitated toward childhood roles, reminisced, and remembered the caricatures of what made our little family unique (read embarrassing, ridiculous, peculiar). My brothers’ booming laughter and my sister’s serious demeanor and calm comfort my soul and bring me back to a time 60 years ago. But, for the most part, without the drama that childhood entails. 

For one week a year we can laugh at our idiosyncrasies, enjoy our oddities, and outwit each other as we vie to be the last one to pee before heading out for an adventure. 

Our first, and often both our harshest and most forgiving, critics are our siblings, the ones who have watched us form and helped form us in the process. Our sibling relationships are no different. I am a better person and more fully whole for these relationships, and that carries back into the reality of my life. Even now, I try on faces in the acceptance of family before showing them to the world.

And in their gaping absence, my oldest brother Marc, who would be 73 today, and Norman and Rachel both, were with us in anecdote, mannerisms, habits and annoyances…. All of which bring me back to where we started. In a family of seven where road trips were our main source of entertainment and vacation, my father, no doubt out of simple practicality in his effort to get somewhere, refused to stop for bathroom breaks. There was a bucket in the car in case of emergencies. Of course.  In preparation for these trips, and at my mother’s insistence, we all lined up to go to the bathroom before heading out on an adventure. Some of us absolutely needed to be the last to go. Today, even in our sixties and seventies, we carry this habit with us, invisible in most situations, but when four people insist on being the last to go, well….. some things simply never change, including the love, the connection and the rivalry of siblings.