30 days meme; day 11 "Siblings"
Well, well, well. What have we here? Looks like Devoken is back in the saddle.
Sorry for the break, people. I had the Weekend of Busy followed by the Monday of Sick, the Tuesday of Slacking Off and the Wednesday of Other Priorities (more on that later). However, we have made it to the Thursday of... umm... I guess the Thursday of regular scheduling.
Anyway, none of that is pertinent to what I'm really writing, which is a piece on my siblings. Let's get to it, shall we?
My sibling situation is a bit unusual. I was an only child for 11 years, and then I got 3 siblings in less than 2 years. Before you ask, let's get the standard questions out of the way. No, none of them are step-siblings. No, my parents did not get divorced and then have kids with other people. No, my parents did not get divorced, remarry each other, and then decide to make a bunch of babies. No, none of us are adopted. We all have the same biological parents, who have been married, and unseparated, for all of our - me and my siblings - lives. There's just a big gap between us.
(Not that any of the scenarios I mentioned above are in any way lesser to my family's scenario. They're just not us.)
Due to that age gap, my siblings and I have never really had a sibling/sibling relationship. It's always been more of an aunt/niece-or-nephew vibe. That'll fade as they become adults, of course. For now, though, I don't really know what it feels like to have a sibling, or to be one. I've always felt like an only child.
I have 2 brothers and 1 sister, all of whom are teenagers. The first two siblings to arrive are twins, 1 a boy and 1 a girl. The last of my siblings is, of course, a singleton and the remaining boy. Silly side note: I'm a woman, (in case there's anyone who didn't know), and my parents are heterosexual, so my family is split half and half down biological gender lines.* I've always been a little tickled by that.
I'm about to do a list of their separate traits, but let me say this beforehand: Despite all their differences, they do share some things, 1 of which is that they are all ridiculously smart and another of which is that they all have wrapped around their fingers.
Thomas:
Thomas is the oldest of my siblings by 1 minute. As that implies, he is one of the twins. He often feels shy, awkward and uncertain around people, which comes off as an adorable gawkiness. Not just adorable to me, either - he's had a fair number of girlfriends, including 2 serious ones. His first serious relationship lasted a bit more than a year, which is impressive when you're 15.
Music is probably the most important thing to Thomas. It's almost constantly surrounding him. He plays**, listens, composes, and he does all of those well - even listening, which he often does actively. His skills are intimidating (see footnote), but he's not a show-off about them. It's love and pleasure that drives him to develop his abilities, not any need to be accomplished.
That love of music is also the base of one of my favorite things about Thomas. When he's angry he doesn't shout, doesn't make snide remarks. He just walks away, sits at the piano and plays until he feels like getting up again. I've never been that healthy when it comes to anger. In fact, I only know 1 other person who is. Thomas may be 11 years younger than I am, but he's definitely more mature when it comes to anger.
Also, this story has to be shared: Thomas plays music, not sports, and mostly has girls for friends. This has gotten him bullied a few times. One of those times, when he was 12, some boys said "All your friends are girls. What are you, a fag?" Thomas replied, "No, it's just that most of the boys I know are jerks."
Mia
Mia is the second twin, and when she was a baby we used to say that she was always making up for being second. From the moment she came out of the womb she did things first, faster and sometimes better. As the twins got older those distinctions became less important, of course, but it turns out that Mia's nature is actually pretty competitive. Babies cannot deliberately engage in competition, but neither is a baby a tabula rasa. Perhaps Mia's predilection for competition leaked out in her baby years.
Besides competitive, Mia is driven and disciplined, unlike anyone else in our family. Even most of our extended family doesn't have Mia's discipline. She is organized, efficient, gets her work done and refuses to do sub-par work in any area of her life. Anything she does, she does well.
All that efficiency and organization lets her squeeze in lots of extracurriculars.*** It's not easy for her, though. She gets home late, starts her homework late, and if she gets too tired to finish her homework she goes to bed and sets her alarm for 4:15am, so she can finish the homework in the morning. But she does finish it, without shorting her extracurriculars, and she wouldn't have it any other way. No, really, she won't. Woe to anyone who suggests that Mia cut back.
As you might have guessed from her schedule, drive and personal standards, she does not tolerate other people getting in her way. When she was 13 she had a group project to do, and one of her partners wasn't holding up his end of the work. She called him up and ripped him a new one, saying that she would not let him ruin her grade. Two and a half hours later, he emailed his work to her, accompanied by the question "Is this good enough?"
I wish Mia would stop pushing herself. She doesn't get enough sleep, she does more than almost anyone else in class II, and it's only going to get worse when she starts her thesis. I help her as much as I can, but she's getting into subjects that I can't handle. (AP Chem? Not my strong suit.) All the same, I'm proud of her. It's hard to juggle everything she does. I couldn't do it, and I really admire that she gathers the strength for all of it.
In fact, I just admire all of Mia's strength. She's strong enough to know what she wants and go after it, strong enough to admit when she needs help, strong enough to stand up for what she believes in. Admittedly, "what she believes in" is usually her own opinion. Still, it can be hard to cling to that in the face of opposition.
Benjamin:
As a singleton who closely followed twins, Benjamin had it kind of rough as a young kid. He was lonely, which is hard to be in a family of 6. Thomas and Mia had themselves, though, and that twin bond is hard to penetrate, and I was way too old to be a real playmate when he was young. I was even too old to be the "cool older sister." He tried really hard to join Thomas and Mia's closeness, but he just couldn't. He was too young to quite fit in with their games, but not young enough that they could fawn over him.
Part of the problem is that Thomas and Mia are, and always have been, super-cool. Benjamin, like me, simply isn't. His jokes aren't quite right, his fashion sense isn't awesome, he's a bit gullible. The older my siblings got, the more Benjamin's lack of coolness mattered. He tried hard to keep up, just like when he was a kid, but he didn't have the instincts. It didn't help that they all went to the same small Catholic school,**** where he was known as "Thomas and Mia's brother."
Slowly, though, he began carving out a place for himself. He never had many friends in grade school, but by the 4th grade he'd made a few strong friendships. Then, when he was in 5th grade, Thomas and Mia transferred to a different school. Benjamin immediately blossomed up. He started bringing friends over, he was more confident and generally seemed more comfortable in his own skin. It was pretty wonderful to see.
Two years later Benjamin joined Thomas and Mia at their school. This time his siblings didn't matter; partly because of the new school setup, but also because now he was clearly his own person. Those two years outside of Thomas and Mia's shadows really helped him grow up. More than that, those years helped him realize/decide that he was pretty awesome. He'd developed his own sense of style (not particularly "cool," but he felt good in it) and found out that people like his jokes.
He's still shy at home, but at school he is gregarious and popular. That's the important part. It's also all backstory, so, moving on...
Benjamin is not driven, like Mia, nor is he intensely focused on one thing, like Thomas. He likes relaxing. He likes watching TV, going out with friends and generally having an easygoing, good time. There's a little bit of hedonism in there, too. It's not that he can't be as accomplished as Thomas and Mia, (which is not to say he isn't accomplished, because he's got his own list*****), simply that his personality does not lead him that way. He's got Mia's efficiency, but he uses it to get his work done so that he can watch movies. He plays music, like Thomas, and enjoys it, but it's not important enough to him that he composes or surrounds himself by it.
He does share 1 important thing with Thomas and Mia - he knows what he wants, and he goes for it. He wants time to relax, so he does him homework quickly, practices quickly and makes sure to get decent grades, to prevent our parents from hassling him. If he wants to go out, he seeks out people and makes the plan. In truth, he's very independent. Unlike Thomas or Mia, he doesn't ask for much, nor does he depend on our parents - or anyone - to cater to him. If he wants something, he makes it happen, and if he can't, he changes what he wants. Obviously, he needs help sometimes, but he is judicious about asking for stuff/assistance. It's not that he's opposed to help or that he has some neurosis about it, it's just that he's very good at recognizing what his priorities are, and believes anything besides those can be worked out.
I suppose we could say that clarity is Benjamin's gift, and I think it's one of the best. I can't imagine being able to prioritize like he does, or being able to focus on what's needful to get the things I want, without getting distracted by thinking about whatever it is I want. His disposition is quieter, calmer, but I think it will serve him admirably down the road. I sure wish I had parts of it.
*I realize that actual gender is different, and that the the gender lines I perceive might not be the reality. For now, though, I'm tickled.
**piano, guitar, electric bass, drums, ukulele, banjo and pretty much anything else he picks up. He sings, too, and is getting really strong on composition, theory, improvisation and solfège.
***cello, voice (she's an amazing singer), theatre, especially musicals, electric bass, composition, various humanitarian clubs and high school activism. Music theory and solfège, too. Those are practically mandatory for the children in my family. I hated them.
****Fun fact about that school and being know by your relatives' reputations: When Thomas and Mia started at that school, they were Devoken's siblings. When I started, I was [my Dad's] daughter. When Dad started, he was [his Dad's] son. That's right, three generations of my family attended that school. It's gone now, thanks to the budget cuts and falling church membership that came in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.
*****percussion, piano, trumpet, musical theatre, Boys Scouts (reasonably high level) and some boxing. He's excellent on improvisation, and he'll join the theory and solfège classes next year.
Sorry for the break, people. I had the Weekend of Busy followed by the Monday of Sick, the Tuesday of Slacking Off and the Wednesday of Other Priorities (more on that later). However, we have made it to the Thursday of... umm... I guess the Thursday of regular scheduling.
Anyway, none of that is pertinent to what I'm really writing, which is a piece on my siblings. Let's get to it, shall we?
My sibling situation is a bit unusual. I was an only child for 11 years, and then I got 3 siblings in less than 2 years. Before you ask, let's get the standard questions out of the way. No, none of them are step-siblings. No, my parents did not get divorced and then have kids with other people. No, my parents did not get divorced, remarry each other, and then decide to make a bunch of babies. No, none of us are adopted. We all have the same biological parents, who have been married, and unseparated, for all of our - me and my siblings - lives. There's just a big gap between us.
(Not that any of the scenarios I mentioned above are in any way lesser to my family's scenario. They're just not us.)
Due to that age gap, my siblings and I have never really had a sibling/sibling relationship. It's always been more of an aunt/niece-or-nephew vibe. That'll fade as they become adults, of course. For now, though, I don't really know what it feels like to have a sibling, or to be one. I've always felt like an only child.
I have 2 brothers and 1 sister, all of whom are teenagers. The first two siblings to arrive are twins, 1 a boy and 1 a girl. The last of my siblings is, of course, a singleton and the remaining boy. Silly side note: I'm a woman, (in case there's anyone who didn't know), and my parents are heterosexual, so my family is split half and half down biological gender lines.* I've always been a little tickled by that.
I'm about to do a list of their separate traits, but let me say this beforehand: Despite all their differences, they do share some things, 1 of which is that they are all ridiculously smart and another of which is that they all have wrapped around their fingers.
Thomas:
Thomas is the oldest of my siblings by 1 minute. As that implies, he is one of the twins. He often feels shy, awkward and uncertain around people, which comes off as an adorable gawkiness. Not just adorable to me, either - he's had a fair number of girlfriends, including 2 serious ones. His first serious relationship lasted a bit more than a year, which is impressive when you're 15.
Music is probably the most important thing to Thomas. It's almost constantly surrounding him. He plays**, listens, composes, and he does all of those well - even listening, which he often does actively. His skills are intimidating (see footnote), but he's not a show-off about them. It's love and pleasure that drives him to develop his abilities, not any need to be accomplished.
That love of music is also the base of one of my favorite things about Thomas. When he's angry he doesn't shout, doesn't make snide remarks. He just walks away, sits at the piano and plays until he feels like getting up again. I've never been that healthy when it comes to anger. In fact, I only know 1 other person who is. Thomas may be 11 years younger than I am, but he's definitely more mature when it comes to anger.
Also, this story has to be shared: Thomas plays music, not sports, and mostly has girls for friends. This has gotten him bullied a few times. One of those times, when he was 12, some boys said "All your friends are girls. What are you, a fag?" Thomas replied, "No, it's just that most of the boys I know are jerks."
Mia
Mia is the second twin, and when she was a baby we used to say that she was always making up for being second. From the moment she came out of the womb she did things first, faster and sometimes better. As the twins got older those distinctions became less important, of course, but it turns out that Mia's nature is actually pretty competitive. Babies cannot deliberately engage in competition, but neither is a baby a tabula rasa. Perhaps Mia's predilection for competition leaked out in her baby years.
Besides competitive, Mia is driven and disciplined, unlike anyone else in our family. Even most of our extended family doesn't have Mia's discipline. She is organized, efficient, gets her work done and refuses to do sub-par work in any area of her life. Anything she does, she does well.
All that efficiency and organization lets her squeeze in lots of extracurriculars.*** It's not easy for her, though. She gets home late, starts her homework late, and if she gets too tired to finish her homework she goes to bed and sets her alarm for 4:15am, so she can finish the homework in the morning. But she does finish it, without shorting her extracurriculars, and she wouldn't have it any other way. No, really, she won't. Woe to anyone who suggests that Mia cut back.
As you might have guessed from her schedule, drive and personal standards, she does not tolerate other people getting in her way. When she was 13 she had a group project to do, and one of her partners wasn't holding up his end of the work. She called him up and ripped him a new one, saying that she would not let him ruin her grade. Two and a half hours later, he emailed his work to her, accompanied by the question "Is this good enough?"
I wish Mia would stop pushing herself. She doesn't get enough sleep, she does more than almost anyone else in class II, and it's only going to get worse when she starts her thesis. I help her as much as I can, but she's getting into subjects that I can't handle. (AP Chem? Not my strong suit.) All the same, I'm proud of her. It's hard to juggle everything she does. I couldn't do it, and I really admire that she gathers the strength for all of it.
In fact, I just admire all of Mia's strength. She's strong enough to know what she wants and go after it, strong enough to admit when she needs help, strong enough to stand up for what she believes in. Admittedly, "what she believes in" is usually her own opinion. Still, it can be hard to cling to that in the face of opposition.
Benjamin:
As a singleton who closely followed twins, Benjamin had it kind of rough as a young kid. He was lonely, which is hard to be in a family of 6. Thomas and Mia had themselves, though, and that twin bond is hard to penetrate, and I was way too old to be a real playmate when he was young. I was even too old to be the "cool older sister." He tried really hard to join Thomas and Mia's closeness, but he just couldn't. He was too young to quite fit in with their games, but not young enough that they could fawn over him.
Part of the problem is that Thomas and Mia are, and always have been, super-cool. Benjamin, like me, simply isn't. His jokes aren't quite right, his fashion sense isn't awesome, he's a bit gullible. The older my siblings got, the more Benjamin's lack of coolness mattered. He tried hard to keep up, just like when he was a kid, but he didn't have the instincts. It didn't help that they all went to the same small Catholic school,**** where he was known as "Thomas and Mia's brother."
Slowly, though, he began carving out a place for himself. He never had many friends in grade school, but by the 4th grade he'd made a few strong friendships. Then, when he was in 5th grade, Thomas and Mia transferred to a different school. Benjamin immediately blossomed up. He started bringing friends over, he was more confident and generally seemed more comfortable in his own skin. It was pretty wonderful to see.
Two years later Benjamin joined Thomas and Mia at their school. This time his siblings didn't matter; partly because of the new school setup, but also because now he was clearly his own person. Those two years outside of Thomas and Mia's shadows really helped him grow up. More than that, those years helped him realize/decide that he was pretty awesome. He'd developed his own sense of style (not particularly "cool," but he felt good in it) and found out that people like his jokes.
He's still shy at home, but at school he is gregarious and popular. That's the important part. It's also all backstory, so, moving on...
Benjamin is not driven, like Mia, nor is he intensely focused on one thing, like Thomas. He likes relaxing. He likes watching TV, going out with friends and generally having an easygoing, good time. There's a little bit of hedonism in there, too. It's not that he can't be as accomplished as Thomas and Mia, (which is not to say he isn't accomplished, because he's got his own list*****), simply that his personality does not lead him that way. He's got Mia's efficiency, but he uses it to get his work done so that he can watch movies. He plays music, like Thomas, and enjoys it, but it's not important enough to him that he composes or surrounds himself by it.
He does share 1 important thing with Thomas and Mia - he knows what he wants, and he goes for it. He wants time to relax, so he does him homework quickly, practices quickly and makes sure to get decent grades, to prevent our parents from hassling him. If he wants to go out, he seeks out people and makes the plan. In truth, he's very independent. Unlike Thomas or Mia, he doesn't ask for much, nor does he depend on our parents - or anyone - to cater to him. If he wants something, he makes it happen, and if he can't, he changes what he wants. Obviously, he needs help sometimes, but he is judicious about asking for stuff/assistance. It's not that he's opposed to help or that he has some neurosis about it, it's just that he's very good at recognizing what his priorities are, and believes anything besides those can be worked out.
I suppose we could say that clarity is Benjamin's gift, and I think it's one of the best. I can't imagine being able to prioritize like he does, or being able to focus on what's needful to get the things I want, without getting distracted by thinking about whatever it is I want. His disposition is quieter, calmer, but I think it will serve him admirably down the road. I sure wish I had parts of it.
*I realize that actual gender is different, and that the the gender lines I perceive might not be the reality. For now, though, I'm tickled.
**piano, guitar, electric bass, drums, ukulele, banjo and pretty much anything else he picks up. He sings, too, and is getting really strong on composition, theory, improvisation and solfège.
***cello, voice (she's an amazing singer), theatre, especially musicals, electric bass, composition, various humanitarian clubs and high school activism. Music theory and solfège, too. Those are practically mandatory for the children in my family. I hated them.
****Fun fact about that school and being know by your relatives' reputations: When Thomas and Mia started at that school, they were Devoken's siblings. When I started, I was [my Dad's] daughter. When Dad started, he was [his Dad's] son. That's right, three generations of my family attended that school. It's gone now, thanks to the budget cuts and falling church membership that came in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.
*****percussion, piano, trumpet, musical theatre, Boys Scouts (reasonably high level) and some boxing. He's excellent on improvisation, and he'll join the theory and solfège classes next year.