On Siblinghood, or Why I'm Happy for My Nephew Today

The end of February has always meant a slew of birthday celebrations. My mom, my brother, and my grandma filled the last three days of that month. Now Gare is the only one I have left, so this year has been a little sad for me. At the same time, I recently got the happy news from said brother that I will be an auntie a second time. Yes, my darling beloved nephew Jameson is about to get his first sibling. So on the occasion of Gary Stewart Jr.’s 45^th birthday, I’m realizing how lucky I am to have him and reflecting on what this means for young J.

I’ve extolled the virtues of only childhood often, and not just because both my nephews-in-law, Owen and Wes, and my step-niece Kenison, are only children. As a younger sibling, I experienced many of the typical japes and hurts that one can expect from the elder, some of which I’ve blocked from memory I’m sure. I retain the memory of Gare practicing his golf swing on one of my baby dolls for instance. And I am to this day self-conscious of eating in front of people (not just my husband, whose misophonia makes the sound of chewing intolerable.) When I plotted to run away to my grandparents’ farm in the twilight hours, he drew me a map. But I also remember consistently and intentionally making his life difficult, mostly through tattling. He shot a dark-eyed junco with his bb gun once for instance, and I just couldn’t wait to tell our mother. She didn’t even have time to take her coat off. And over a junco, a twittery ugly bird that looks like a lump of coal in the snow, he lost his only gun.

Gare with Tucker's young usurper Bailey

Whoever and whatever the newbie is, I feel for Jameson. Imagine: you are the center of your parents’ and grandparents’ lives. All their love and attention is focused squarely and generously on you. Then one day, seemingly out of the blue, that love and attention is cut in half…half! For a while, maybe only a third remains, because in the beginning, this usurper is helpless. Now mom and dad aren’t as available, aren’t as responsive to your every desire. This interloper is cuter, newer, and in some cases, suffers from some health problem that makes them a constant concern that never goes away, and you all have to make sacrifices. You were top dog and now you’re second fiddle. This Funny or Die video featuring James Franco and his little brotherDave comes to mind.

Dan's sisters, the lovely twins Jen and Jodi

Dan's gorgeous sister Morgan

But since my mother’s death I’m realizing that having siblings isn’t about enriching your childhood, it’s about enriching your adulthood. I don’t know how I could go through this without Gare. After mom passed, and I sat numb and gutted in the hospice room, my brother’s silent arrival was like a shot of morphine. Never have I been so relieved to see someone in a suit. Because as supportive as Dan was and has been, he could never know what I’m going through like Gare can.

And that’s the point. When you get older, your sibling is the one friend who knows you like no other possibly can. I don’t mean feelings and so forth, because the Stewarts don’t really do that. I mean that only your sibling knows details about you the way a good fiction writer knows her characters. I remember all Gare’s school pictures, in which he often looked stoned, though he wasn’t. I remember the feathered 80’s hair. His first car: a red Ford pickup. That he played Star Frontiers and wrote his own comic, a parody of Star Blazers, about the space wars with the cootie empire. That, for whatever reason, he had perfect attendance all through high school. That, like me, he body-rocked while laying in bed. (I thought it was just the two of us that did that for a long, long time. What a relief that it’s actually a thing, which I found out when I was 30.)

I tell my students to imagine their character’s childhood bedroom. Gare had set up an entire Star Wars universe in his, complete with the Death Star and the Degobah System. I often played there instead of my own room: played school with his action figures (Obi Wan was the teacher of course) and listened to his tapes, the Cars and ZZ Top weirdly. A lot of brothers wouldn’t let their little sisters play in their room. A lot of brothers wouldn’t have anything to do with their little sisters. But Gare let me be the girl character (fur coat-clad bimbo usually) when he played big time wrestling with our cousins. He taught me to clean fish. To dribble and shoot a basketball. To tell time and count by fives (because that’s how clocks were.) We stayed up late on Christmas to prove Santa wasn’t real and let our old people know the jig was up. We made tapes, a sort of podcast for the 80’s, of  our own radio show on a station we called WButtFartee (WBFRT?).

Brother from another mother: my stepbro Brad

Now, when Gare and I get drunk together, I feel like a child again, and I remember what it was like to be happy – the kind of happiness that a childhood in the country creates, especially a pre-internet, pre-cable country childhood. With a sibling, there are images, things you recall that no one else can imagine. The sound and smell of those old dome popcorn-makers. The smell of the inside of the tent we slept in on the lot next to our house. The smell of our grandparents living room. Grandma’s talcum powder. Algae. Fishing lures. The sounds of Space Invaders and Galaga. Nose plugs. Playing baseball with sprinkler heads for bases. New asphalt. Things from trees that stick to your feet. Giant beach fires fueled with gasoline. The sound of water lapping against barrels under a raft. Making ice balls by dipping snow in a little whispering brook. Waiting for the bus in the dark. Tall trees in the wind. Stepping on a stump buried beneath sand in shallow water. The chill when you catch a snake slithering past on the surface. The fumes from a speedboat engine. What a vrusk and a yazirian are. What a wave motion gun is. What a bullhead is.

Gare rocks the party

As brothers go, I was lucky. Gare had an ATC that he used to pick me up from the bus stop and pull me in a sled in winter. The first time I rode a motorcycle, guess what I thought about. He showed my writing to my cousins who then tried to get me to sign off on it. Flattering. And now I’m a writer. When he left for college I was glad at first. For one, the magic room was mine. The entire top floor and my own bathroom! But when my parents divorced and my mom and I moved, I became terribly lonesome, and I wished I had the partner-in-crime that only a sibling can be. It took a while before it occurred to me that we probably had similar lonely experiences in high school. We both skipped our senior proms. We both liked to party…just teenage painkiller-seeking. When I was in Battle Creek, Gare sent me the most awesome mix tapes. To this day, Judas Priest’s “Turbo Lover” and Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at the Devil” make me smile. And “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions. Gare called that tape “Bad Ballads.”

I guess what I hope for Jameson is that he will be half the cool brother that Gare was, to whoever it is that comes along. I hope that when he’s had it up to here with the insufferable little turd, that Gare and I will serve as an example of how precious and wonderful it will be, when he’s grown, to have that person in his life.

Happy birthday Gare! I love you!