Gift Horse

My very own gift horse, filled to the brim, has arrived at my doorstep and I’m looking it full in the maw, daring it to swallow me whole. What self-respecting sentimental mother wouldn’t do the same?

My kids were together for this Thanksgiving. Not unusual, since we always are on this occasion. But the dynamic this year is entirely different; our eldest is a freshman in college and, like so many students streaming home for this holiday, her arrival has been the most eagerly anticipated of any visitor. True, our son, 16, didn’t wear his interest in seeing his sister with the same alacrity as he does a new item from American Eagle, though we know from the occasional changing of the guard standing sentry at his cool exterior that he misses her. It’s our youngest daughter, 12, and openly worshipful of her sister, who counted the days along with me till her big sib crossed the threshold. Never mind that we just went up to Boston to visit her barely a month ago. Gratifying to me is that both our younger children, for very different reasons, enjoy having her around and their demeanor changes for the better when she’s here. They simply argue less, laugh more, and the quibbles over who has or gets what are relatively few.

Recently, I had become better at tuning out the melee that could start with something as simple as one child’s plea to the other to be left alone, a plea that only invited more of the same bothersome behaviors. For sanity’s sake, it became easier to dissociate unless I was pulled in when they couldn’t end it themselves. Naturally, it was worse when they were younger, when each was jealous of the other for myriad reasons, each needing to exact his or her form of justice even it meant simply to be alone, willfully cut off from the other two.

As one of two kids, I recall thinking as I grew up, and then married, that I wanted more than two, that two could sometimes be lonely. My brother and I were different as children, fighting more, then talking less; it was as adults that we discovered a burgeoning friendship based on commonalities and a mutually appreciated sense of humor. Then, in 2004, I lost him and the resulting grief forced my eyes open. Though I try very hard, and mostly successfully, not to remind my own children that they need one another, that they must cherish their siblinghood, I do think it every day. During the uglier of their battles, I often want to scream, ‘why are you wasting this time? Grab on! You just never, ever know.’ To utter these words would only earn me the stare of children certain of their mother’s emotional fragility. They would tiptoe and I don’t want that.

After all, what children don’t home in on their siblings’ tender spots? The savage name-calling, the unauthorized borrowing, and so much of the jealousy of what seems to them at particular times to be an imbalance in the way they are raised and given privileges are all part of what kept unarticulated treaties between them short, lacking in conviction; so often, such treaties were based on tentative understanding of the facts, either those issued by us - ‘you’re 6 and your sister was 8 when she got her ears pierced. It won’t be long’ or ‘we didn’t take your brother to his first R-rated movie at 10 years old, so we’re not going to take you either,’ a statement that didn’t reveal just who did take him – or anything revealed in the glee of the moment.

That moment came on Black Friday and nourished the one tiny shoot of resentment to bloom over this past Thanksgiving holiday. We’d been shopping; brimming like a cauldron of good will and optimism, pride in my growing children and my new job, I took them to a prime suburban shopping area and let them go realistically wild. At one point, my youngest daughter heard me let slip, ‘I really like those Uggs; think I might get myself some soon.’ Of course, she heard the permissive lilt in my voice and took her own opening. ‘Maybe I can get them for Hannukah? My feet have stopped growing, I’m sure.’ That’s been the proviso. I gave her hope, describing how grandparents and parents could give them to her as a collective gift. Moments later, in a shop with her older sibs, she told her beloved older sister what she might get. She didn’t say it with a provocative, ‘guess what I’m getting;’ it was more matter-of-fact and, yes, a little gleeful. My eldest daughter, an Uggs wearer for the past year, who thirsted for them for twice that long before they came her way, gave me a chilly stare. ‘I’m 18 and she’s 12. Why is she getting them now?’ I had to give her the feet-have-stopped-growing alibi and the response was a shake of the head that connoted full resignation to what she has come to regard as the injustice revealed in how her younger sibs have benefited from privileges it took her far longer to earn – and only because she’s the eldest. (In my weaker moments, I fall prey to guilt over this truth.)
When we returned home from the shopping trip, I listened to my kids laugh and joke, just as I’ve been doing for the past several days. Driving, I let myself reflect on the way my younger two kids are getting along, hanging out together in their basement rec room watching movies. And I recalled an earlier conversation with my youngest. She had remarked just the other day, holding back her own conviction that it might remain consistent, that she and her brother are starting to be friendlier now that their sister is away. And they are; they kick a soccer ball around in the basement and when we took them to a French film (her first, his second) the other week, after it had ended, he gave her an encouraging nudge and the two shared some pride in being able to handle the challenge of watching a very different kind of film. With the same swell in my chest, I watch my son and older daughter, how he towers over her petite frame, looking himself like a college sophomore, and I feel my throat tighten around a memory: like them, my brother who was younger than I by 22 months, looked like my older sib when we were teenagers. I loved it when people pointed it out as they do to my older kids, how they, too, seem to enjoy the switch in physical dynamics.

Cooking on that Friday afternoon, post-shopping, for a gathering of my husband’s siblings, their kids, and some of our friends, I couldn’t have articulated it, but my joy was palpable. Though I miss my brother every single day, struck blunt force now and then with new grief, it’s the knowledge that my kids are growing not just up, but together, that put a spring in my step as the music played and I chopped vegetables, careful not to slice my finger, willing the gift horse closer.