Siblings bug each other. I read a newspaper article recently that claimed fighting with siblings prepared people for life. In that case I might be extremely prepared! I think that the ultimate safety of most sibling relationships allows for a sort of all-out fight. I mean, my brother is still my brother even if we fight.
Once he and my father came for a visit in WV and we got iced in. There were about 3 inches of hard ice on top of about a foot of snow. It looked glittery and beautiful, but was completely inhospitable. You could not walk anywhere. We used ashes from the stove to make paths out to the chickens and out to the woodshed. We had to stay in the house for a week. I made a batch of donuts. Liam taught his grandfather how to play Mario Kart. Unexpectedly, my father loved Mario Kart, though he was terrible, much to Liam’s delight. We watched movies. It was inevitable that we would get on each other’s nerves. My brother turned all the plants in the house. I turned them all back. My brother moved the furniture. I moved it back. My brother expressed annoying opinions. I disagreed. My brother lost the cap to a water bottle to which I was attached. I went into orbit about that one. I remember the moment of deliberately deciding to escalate, deliberately deciding to make a federal case about insisting that the cap to that water bottle get found. NOW. As I remember it, the little orange cap got found, though I’m not sure that peace reigned as a consequence. In fact, the Friday of that week, I went to work, risking life and limb. I felt the dangers of driving – which were still considerable – were preferable to the risk of fratricide.
We still fight. We started fighting when we were kids and have pretty much never stopped. The other day I found myself yelling into the phone while at work! The discussion continued in a ridiculous and slightly surreal email exchange. None of that changes the fact that he’s my brother. I see lots of siblings who fight, each in their own family style. I remember my grandmother scolding me one day. “You fight with your brother all the time. But I say anything negative about him, you fly off the handle.” I guess she was asking for consistency. Yeah, we fight. Yeah, an onlooker might think we hated each other and disapproved of each other.
It's A FAV!