Eileen Goudge

Brotherly Love

I grew up in a big family, and it seems like we were always either playing with each other or teasing each other or fighting over who got what. Maybe it’s because there were so many of us, each scrambling for every scrap of food & attention we could get. My sister Patty, whenever my mom doled out pieces of cake, would always spit on hers as soon as she got it, just in case my mom decided she’d gotten too big a piece and decided to “even” it up. We fought over who got the first waffle on Sunday mornings – my dad ended up having to do a lottery system (we’d pick a number, and whoever had the number closest to the one my dad had chosen got the next waffle). We teased each other mercilessly, sometimes to the point of tears. I once tied my sister Patty’s favorite stuffed animal to the bedpost and whipped it with a belt to get back at her (the way she screamed, you’d have thought I was whipping her). We even fought over who got to be the priest and who had to be the penitent, when we played “confession.”

Maybe that’s why I was so struck by how well our friends’ two boys play together, when we joined their family on Saturday for a picnic, at the Rhinebeck Air Show.

The brothers are about 2 years apart and their mom reports that they are best friends. The younger one looks up to his big brother and shadows his every move; the big brother shares his toys and treats with the younger one. I think the photo the eldest’s godfather, my husband Sandy, took of the two of them says it all. To me, it looks like an illustration from a children’s book – a story about the way it should be with siblings.

Not that I don’t adore mine. Despite our wrangling, we managed to make it through to adulthood with our relationships with one another (mostly) intact. Now, if only those childhood nicknames hadn’t stuck.

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