I have two half-siblings. Whenever I describe my family and mention that I have a half-brother and a half-sister that always brings on the same odd head tilt that you usually see in dogs when they hear a high-pitched sound, in the faces of people I’m describing my family system to. Once we get beyond the baroo and explain how my siblings were first on the scene with one father and I with a different father the baroo naturally goes away on its own.
I love my siblings, whether they are aware of it or not. I often times think that the natural balance is off, my sister expresses her feelings much more easily than my brother does. Despite some technological hurdles I speak to my sister most of all in my entire family. She was born under the sign of Taurus and that stubbornness is absolutely implacable. Just try to ignore her phone calls! I don’t unless I’m driving or I’m otherwise preoccupied. Where my sister is very connected (and which I feel is a very good thing for her to be) my brother is just the opposite. I believe I last talked to him at the last funeral we all attended. Does this bother me? No. It used to, but then I grew up. Part of having family is being there even if they can’t or won’t, and in so many ways, being there despite their best efforts to encourage it any other way. I could of course saunter in and become a totally unbearable pain in the ass, but over time I’ve learned that if people are to change that it has to spring from within, it can’t be imposed from without.
Life goes on. Wether your siblings are totally absent or so present that they’ve got a lemonade stand in your head you can’t really ever escape them. Even if you are so upset that you want to hold a grudge, eventually instincts win out and you find yourself unable to escape these people. It’s as it should be. The only sorry part of any of this is the shame in missing out on how special and wonderful your family can be in the here and now. Assuming that they’ll always be there, seeing them as immortal is just a fantasy we use to chase away the fact that death will eventually come for all of us and all of them. It seems a squandering to not try to embrace them and all their obnoxious spiny-selfness.
