Siblings

Gak, Lisa, Thisbe, Agnes, Mama, Matteus

Glorious fall Sunday.  Wind whipping and churning the leaves so that for brief instants they rise up like the golden sleeve of a half-hidden god.  Wind whipping the local election yard signs into the street, names clicking under tires.  You are at Ricki and Peder's, sleeping (knock on wood) on Daddy's chest while he watches football.  Thisbe and Gak and Ampa and Lisa and Ed are at the zoo.  I told Thisbe to blow three kisses to the penguins.  Lisa is Gak's sister, Ed is her husband, and we don't see them very often.  The last time was five years ago so they'd never met you or your sister before.  Thisbe tore open gifts from them: a Dora horse vet for her and Thomas the Train items for you.  The horse has subsequently been re-named Love and Dora is now Jewel Gold.  Just before they left for the zoo we watched a video of Lisa doing dressage, guiding a horse around a ring lined with low white fences, the horse's movements smooth and controlled.  The horse stops, hooves lined in two even rows.  The horse takes delicate steps backward or canters in a long diagonal, leaning like a ship into a hard wind.

Your father returned yesterday from a three day trip, the first of that kind (i.e. the kind where I am left alone with two children) since you've been born.  I was really actually only "alone" with both of you for approximately 50 minutes, on the car ride from Northfield to Minneapolis.  You immediately started screaming and you screamed continuously for the first thirty minutes.  Meanwhile, Thisbe started asking questions I could barely hear and could only answer in a voice wound exceptionally tight.  Finally I called your father (so that he could in some small way be part of the joy) and handed the cell phone to Thisbe.  As Thisbe handed it back to me (through the scream-permeated air), she dropped the phone.  "Dammit Thisbe!" I yelled.  At which point Thisbe started crying and saying "you hurt my feelings, Mama" at which point I started crying and saying "I'm so sorry I hurt your feelings" and then there we were, all three of us, somewhere in Apple Valley, crying.  "I wish I was in Texas with Daddy," said Thisbe.  "Me too," I whimpered.

Your face grows steadily wider.  When we hold you in a seated position you less and less resemble a bobblehead, although much of the time you study your belly button, chin studiously pulled to chest.  You love to talk, especially to imitate tones, especially lilting high-pitched tones.  "ooohh--eeeee" Thisbe says and "ooooo-eeeee--EEEEE" you respond, smiling in delight.  There is a musicality in your voice that I don't remember in Thisbe's.  Maybe you will be gifted with your father's musical prowess. 

Last Wednesday your father and I sat on the couch after he returned from confirmation class; I was sipping a glass of wine and half-watching a Swedish detective series in which the protagonist is a blond, 34-year-old journalist with two children whose husband has long "work dinners" with women who have longer legs and more bubbly laughs than the protagonist.  Your father had a pile of small orange papers in his lap; he'd asked all of the 8th graders to write down a question.  Anything, he told them.  One wrote, "why doesn't God always answer our prayers?" and another wrote "is it OK to be gay?"  At the other end of the spectrum two students wrote "what does the fox say?", a reference to a current song in which adults dress as animals and do a lot of hip-thrusting in the dark woods.
 
We watched the video of the song today while we waited for Lisa and Ed to arrive for brunch; I did some muted hip thrusts and Gak jiggled you a little side to side.  Uncle Michael and Auntie Agnes looked on skeptically, trying to decide whether to be impressed.  It's been a little odd to see my mother and Lisa together because I so rarely get to do so.  They are lovely and warm and chatty with one another when together so I don't entirely understand why they aren't closer confidants.  I mean, I understand it has to do with the way they were raised, brokenness in their family, differences in who they have become.  Still, it's strange to see Lisa put her glass of iced tea in the fridge, half-full, the way my mother does, odd to hear them talk about butter cake and which set of china their mother used for which holiday.  I have so many siblings and such a different relationship with each of them--it's odd to think that you and Thiz will only get one opportunity for a sibling relationship and stranger still that your father and I have no control how that relationship develops.  As adults you might talk three times a week or you might drop one another an e-mail once a year.

Because my parents are divorced, all of my siblings are half or step or adopted; I've always wondered whether a full genetic blood tie with any one of my siblings would make a difference about how I felt about him or her.  My closeness to (or distance from) each of my siblings seems to have less to do with the amount of time spent with each of them and more to do with whether our values align, whether we're apt to try to care for one another in the same way.

I read an article recently about the importance of siblings (I think the writer had four or five), how siblings are ultimately the people who know you for the longest in your lifetime.  But I'm not sure knowing longest equates to knowing best.  Sometimes I feel like the role of each sibling in a family becomes more archetypal and less complex.  We become a conglomeration of those attributes that our siblings have in a lesser degree.  So you have the responsible/successful child and the artistic/activist child and the nurturing/listener child and the cosmopolitan/sophisticated child, etc., etc.  We all take part in this, children and parents and grandparents alike, because we want each child to be distinct, an individual.  We are always comparing you to Thisbe, especially Thisbe as a baby.  Even in this post I'm saying that I think you will be gifted with your father's voice while Thisbe has been relegated to the off-pitch wonder of mine.  We call you sweet and we call her intense.  And in our efforts to distinguish, I wonder if we leave less room for growth or change or surprise.  I'm so eager to know who you are, Matteus, that I sometimes inflate a single characteristic and call it the person you are becoming.

I wrote the majority of this post at Dunn Brothers in Linden Hills this morning and didn't finish it because I wanted to add a few photos first.  On the way home from the cafe, as I drove by my old high school, I saw an animal trotting across the street.  A cat with a bushy tail, I thought.  The animal wasn't afraid, it didn't disappear into the shrubbery and as I drove closer I saw that it was a fox, its coat a mottled red, its white face dappled with patches of gray and black.  It trotted down the sidewalk and I watched it until I noticed the car behind me, the driver of which seemed far less interested in what the fox might be saying.

Still, today I'm thinking about the people I assume I know best, wondering how often I see simply a version of who the person used to be rather than changing my vision along with them to truly understand who they have become.

Matteus and Thisbe

Michael and Mama

Agnes, Michael, and Mama