Siblings

Recently Brenda posted some observations about spending time with one of her sisters and posed an interesting question: How do you relate to your siblings?

My sister and I were very close as kids, but as we became adults I often wondered if we were even from the same planet. We haven’t lived in the same state since 1977, so it is no surprise that we developed different tastes, interests and beliefs. She remained in the shadow of our parents through all of those years and I moved away and developed a personality that was sometimes quite alien to them.

Our early influences were certainly the same. We are part of large, middle class Italian and Cajun French families. We grew up Catholic and experienced Catholic school education for twelve years. We spent most holidays with aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins.

But our differences are striking. She is still a devout Catholic, I am an occasionally Unitarian Universalist. She can’t stand my favorite Presidential candidate. She never married and I am on my third marriage. She has lived at four addresses during her life; I lost count at twenty five addresses. For some reason my little sister always thought I was the smart one, yet she has a Masters Degree in Education while I’m still working on my Bachelors some three decades later.

One thing that united us as adults was our parents’ aging issues. My sister and I usually agreed on what we had to do to take care of them, right down to the eventual decision to move them into a nursing home.

Then came Hurricane Katrina. She was flooded out of her house and temporarily lived with me and my wife. That is the most contact we had had in almost thirty years and we learned a lot about each other during those six weeks. There are still many differences, but this time it is the similarities that are striking. We are both stubborn and a little judgmental. Our thoughts are organized but our living spaces are messy. We over think everything. We have a similar approach to problem-solving and we are both story-tellers. These are all traits we learned from our parents.


And during this time we became friends. That was the unexpected result of sharing an address for a few weeks. Our parents are both gone now and in many ways all we have is each other. That has brought us closer together. We can laugh at our differences as much as at our similarities.

Another question posed in Brenda’s blog is: Are you more alike or different? Clearly we are more different yet in many important ways, we are very much alike.