Built-In BFF's

I grew up in a big family. A big loud, chaotic, close, loving, happy family. A unique family culture developed over the years, shaped by the influence of my parents and the six distinct individuals that they spawned.   OK, you are correct . . . "unique family culture" pretty much translates "serious weirdness." But it  sounds better, right? A few weeks ago four of the six siblings gathered with our mom and various spouses to celebrate my sister's fiftieth birthday. (My older sister, mind you.) As always, we laughed a lot and ate a lot and the conversation whirled at a dizzying speed.

At one point I sat back and tried to listen to the banter as it must have sounded to our waitress or to the slightly intoxicated people at the neighboring table. A peculiar lexicon evolves among siblings, based on shared experience and a common way of processing life. We spring along easily with one another's jumps in logic, follow each other's verbal shorthand fluidly. So much Sandholtz-specific vocabulary flew that a random passer-by would have no idea what we were talking about. It made me smile. Few things in life make me any happier than sitting around with my siblings. My life came fully equipped with built-in best friends.

I don't know how my mom did it. No doubt she occasionally longed to trade some or all of us to a passing camel train. Or she could have run off with the caravan and returned after we had all finished high school and become reasonably civilized human beings. But no, she and Dad stuck it out without killing or maiming any of us--even through our most annoying or obnoxious phases. (Mine stretched for more than a decade. The 1970's must have felt like a century to my parents.) And they liked us. No really, they liked us and so we liked each other. Still do. No gift mom and dad gave me even touches the gift of siblings--not even my Burgundy Cherry Schwinn three-speed or the Barbie Beauty Center.

There's something deep and durable about a friendship that develops between two people who share a bunk bed, or a tube tent on a backpacking trip, or the rear cargo area of a Plymouth station wagon on a cross-country road trip. Who called for help when I shoved a rock up my nostril while the parents were gone? Taught me how to cut open a golf ball on Dad's work bench?  How can I not feel devoted to a sister who walked me down the dark hall to the bathroom (all ten feet of it) every night for years because I was afraid of boogey men or a brother who let me climb on the back of his mo-ped and hitch a ride to Livermore High School? Who but a sibling would welcome me and my four kids to stay in his home for seven weeks so that I could attend the last term I needed to finish my bachelor's degree or farm her own children out to friends so that she could fly eight hundred miles to help me after an emergency surgery or take time to read an essay at midnight and give thoughtful feedback? My siblings make me laugh out loud and let me whine now and then and inspire me with their sheer goodness. We fit, like old jeans or broken in Vans--comfortable, familiar, easy. Our pasts are intertwined, our present and our futures as well. We are part of each other's eternity.
BFF's.

What do you love about having siblings? What's your favorite sibling memory?