Thursday, February 3, 2022

A Little Less Than Kind

Siblings are a thing that kind of cuts both ways, you know what I mean? On the one hand, yes, you don't have to grow up on your own, left alone to weather the buffeting and barometric instability of your Boomer parents' (if you're my age-ish) weird fronts of clashing narcissism and fawning that mostly manifests as preoccupied neglect. It's nice to have someone there to a) divide up the awful, uneven attention and b) commiserate about it later. Like 20 years later. Like "wait, so he was drunk from like 1980 through 2006, right?" and "oh, so it really was that they hated each others' guts, wasn't it? That argument that one time where she threw the vacuum through the screen door really wasn't about where the sofa was positioned at all, was it?" I'm not saying it saves a lot on the therapy bill, you just go into your sessions with a little bit of the material pre-digested.

On the other hand, siblings are a SUPER ONEROUS OBLIGATION ALL THE DANG TIME. As a sibling, I am vociferously and emphatically including myself in the CAPS LOCK declarative damnation, absolutely. The problem is that you're connected by blood, which means the ways in which you interact are, unlike some dumb friends you might have picked up along the way like so much frat-house couch crabs, tied entirely to the human-existence life-death cycle. So when they do stuff, there's never an easy one-off, half-ass obligatory face-showing and then you're done with it forever. When your friend has a baby, you show up and say "oh, how precious" at their smooshed-up shar-pei-looking post-fetus larva, talk a bunch of shit about their ugly baby and its mother's stupid boyfriend she never, ever should have procreated with on the car ride home, and then immediately never think about any of them again at your leisure, up to and including never. But that's the luxury and the beauty of human friendship: it's always opt-in.

If your siblings have babies, though, then what? The kid wasn't your idea. You didn't choose to do ANYTHING with HER stupid boyfriend she never should have procreated with, but now all of a sudden this baby is SOMETHING to you? Depending on what gender you roll with, now you're an "aunt" or an "uncle" without any say in the matter? Now I gotta get this thing Christmas presents and come to its super lame kid birthday parties even when I'm an adult* and watch my language when I talk in front of it and not accidentally teach it how to jaywalk or shoplift or whatever. And worst-case, they're all traditional and now I have to show up at a church for some baptism or first communion or something and I'm not allowed even ONE TIME to heckle the fake-ass celibate in wizard robes up front as he's touching on the defenseless child with his Jesus magic. If it's a friend, you go ahead and shout out what you feel and your friends' grandma gets all offended and now you're not friends with that couple at all anymore, except maybe the girl who thought it was pretty funny but couldn't say anything because she has to live with those people but sends you a half-apologetic text before never speaking to you again. Try that with your siblings. Now you're in a fight FOREVER and Thanksgivings are a nightmare.

And me, I'm a sibling a couple of times over, so it's all exponential. The obligations are ruthless, but luckily I've got one living out of state, which they don't tell you is a family-obligation-get-out-of-jail-free card. If I wish for you one thing, it's to live at least one time zone away from most or all of your immediate family. There's no replacement for the feeling of liberation. It only takes one within striking distance to keep you bogged down and under threat, though. Like the one closest to me, she already tried to give me COVID once just this past Christmas Eve. This was after I'd spent two years getting the most out of the second best way to weasel out of family stuff besides distance: airborne global pandemic. I could have already told you this from when I was the only one who had chicken pox when I was 9: nobody wants you in their house if you can give them a horrible, scarring disease.

This past December, my sister was done with all that and decided we should come; and then let us know like two days later, uh whoops, she and her brood all actually had COVID and didn't know it. None of us got it, but I can say that's the closest I've been this whole pandemic.

Now next weekend, you know what I'm doing? I'm going to a gathering. The biggest gathering since COVID started. Do you know what it's for? It's a wedding. Why would I go to some wedding during a pandemic? Because I accidentally let it slip that I'm triple vaccinated, so now there's no way I can avoid going to the wedding for THE SAME SISTER! Who already tried to COVID-ize us once!

It's intolerable and infuriating, but what can you do? Sure, as an adult, you can opt out of sibling-hood, but realistically, you know you've got stuff you're going to want a built-in, excuse-proof audience for as well. Plus at some point your parents are just going to become more and more of a couple of ungainly Boomer-ass millstones. You don't want to try to drag those around on your own. So you do the thing. You show up. And you have people in your life who kind of look like you and also uniquely understand the reason why you're as fucked up as you are, because they're fucked up in the same way, for the same reasons. And also you should have someone, at least one person, you can shove into a swimming pool with all their regular clothes on and not really care how mad they get because it will always be funny to you. That's family. There's an upside.

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*The one carve-out of course is if there is a bouncy house. We need to erase the stigma of adults getting bouncy houses. Otherwise we're only ever going to get our rare chance at some otherwise stultifying kids party and, without having to wait for all that pent-up, frustrated energy to get released at once, way fewer kids would get hurt.

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