Sibling Pairs

I met with my brother John yesterday. He lives about two hours away so we met at a park in a town mid-way between us. I had an electrical problem in my truck camper and John is an electrical engineer. We worked on the problem without success. (AC don’t mix with DC.) Oh well.

John and I often meet halfway to have lunch or dinner. We talk for a couple of hours then drive home. John is the sibling closest in age to me. As kids, we were paired by our place in the family. We did much together – boy scouts, paper routes, pick-up sports.

By the luck of the draw, all of us 12 kids were paired up. Dan and Bill were both born during World War II. Then John and I, the first of the baby boomers. Then Linda and Nancy, born next, back-to-back in the midst of ten boys. (There must be a god to have divided our family thusly, as least that what Linda and Nancy say.) They are the dividing zone between what’s called the four older and six younger boys.                

Then George and Mike, Fred    and Alan, and Joe and Gary. But while Fred and Alan, while paired with each other, they were also floaters. Fred sometimes ran with George and Mike, to make a triad. And Alan, sometimes teamed up with Joe and Gary to make (in my mind) the “three little kids”.

The most visible pair of course are Linda and Nancy. Born a year and a half apart, in the midst of all those boys, they always were an obvious twosome. They had their own room in a house with only four bedrooms. With Mom and Dad in a room that left the boys in the other two. If you’re keeping score [which I’m of course not], that’s two girls per room and five boys per room. [This fact, though, does provide me with plenty of ammunition in any present-day

argument about who was special in our parent’s eyes, and who, as kids, got all the gravy.]

But, on the other hand, what a delight it is to watch Linda and Nancy in one or the other’s kitchen, preparing a meal together. They’re like one brain with four arms. All that togetherness through the years melded into them a kind of a closeness that brings faith to the godless. This is not to make a ranking of the closeness quotient in the sibling pairs in our

family. I think closeness is not something that can be measured or counted. Maybe it can only be observed.

The pairings of the past have easily been carried into the present day. While circumstances and experiences have changed the internal workings of John and I for instance, something indescribable in us, has not changed. During our recent lunch, I looked across the table at John while he was talking and realized the bond we share. And it was good. John and I have gone down different paths in life.  We have different but not necessarily opposing outlooks in life. Differing politics, differing religious beliefs, but not differing views about family. This just makes the bond John and I share even more special because differences that could drive us apart seem trivial inside the bond of family.

Bob