The ties that bind.
Regatta was a blast. Matt’s team — the Men’s Heavyweight Eight-member crew for the Florida Institute of Technology — finished last in their heat, unfortunately. But they rowed damn well, in my opinion. [Plus I got to see my brother in a singlet, which was laughs enough to last me a while.]
It was exhilarating to watch. The atmosphere was electric. We got to meet his Florida friends, which was a first. He’s a sophomore at FIT, and this is the first I’ve seen of his gang. They’re all monstrous-tall, making Tall Matt look like Munchkin Matt in comparison, and making the rest of the fam look like Mini-Munchkins.
Family-style: Iain and I returned Saturday night, at which time I was overcome by post-traumatic stress syndrome.
I love my family. I will kill or maim any who does them an injury or injustice, and that’s no joke. But at times the dramas, the sagas and the bickering are wearying to the point of exhaustion. And that point is when I snap, only to regret it later, through tears and self-loathing.
A bit of background: I’m the oldest of six children, borne by Mom and Dad, who are still married, and happily. I’m 23, Em is 21, Matt is 19, Kel is 15, Kate is almost 13, and Ry is almost 9. Baby Ry was born when I was a freshman in high school.
I suffer from oldest-child paranoia, the pressure to be a shining example, to never fail, to quietly bear the crosses as the family mediator, and to care for every child who came after me. I left home at 19 to escape it, but it follows like my shadow. I still have dreams wherein I must rescue my siblings from a gang of murderers. I manage to get them all to safety, but inevitably I am shot and killed in the raid.
Em, next in line, stepped in at a young age as the Li’l Corporal, commanding everyone younger than she, a slave to the drive of organization, alphabetization, order. Matt was the only son for a long time, subject to fits of rage. He left home and went the farthest, and may not return. Kelly is the prima donna, the Middlest Child, fearful of being lost in the crowd. This is compounded by her Napoleon complex. Katie bears a unique Middle Child syndrome — The Almost-Youngest. Not quite the baby, and dodging out of the shadow of her charismatic older sisters and absentee eldest sister. Ryan is without doubt The Baby, infrequently punished and often-indulged, never above a well-timed tantrum, indiscriminate with favor, ignorant of the bounds of manners and personal space.
And so, nearly every gathering has an undercurrent of broiling tension, the accumulation of years of misdeeds, grudges, and preconceptions. Eight people pulling in eight separate directions. The tension wins out, I snap with a hurtful word, and the offender removes to a corner to nurse the wound. The guilt doesn’t set in until later, when I’ve arrived at my home, with my husband, to brood over what harm I may have done, the senseless harm in lashing out.
Having a large family is in itself a burden. There are rivalries, alliances, battles; there is the never-ending jockeying for position, for attention, for love. I still feel competitive with my sister. I still feel pressure to lead, to perform, to protect.
But it’s that last, the duty to protect, that hits me at the core, and is the base cause of any guilt I harbor. Because I will kill or maim any who does them injury or injustice, and that includes myself. Love and duty wins every time, for better or worse.
Burden though they may be, wearying though they may be, petty and bickering and sniveling and grouchy as they may be, they’re mine, the first clan to which I belonged. I’m watching them each, as they grow; shadows of what I am or could have been or might yet be in each of their faces. We’re bound together, try as we might to unloose the bonds. For them I cry in the dark, trying to shake what frightens me. For them I try to ease my own guilt.
This has helped.
