My big sibling tribe, my best friends
The other day my 7-year-old asked, Mommy who is your best friend? Daddy. I said. Repeating what I had heard my Mom tell us growing up, and now understand myself. No, I mean before Daddy. Names college best friends. No before that Mom, names high school best friends, and on it goes. No, Mom, I mean since you were born. Isn’t it your siblings!? This is what I love about having kids, they really remember everything you tell them. Growing up as the oldest of eight children (yes!), & my husband the middle of five, (yes, our moms are superwomen!) we’re both fascinated with and really just love and appreciate big families. We’ll often talk about the advantages and fruit that comes from having multiple siblings. Always someone there for you. Always someone you can relate to. More opinions to learn from, or to learn how to argue with ;), more personalities to learn how to deal with, more presents to give and get, more love to go around. For our little boys immediate-family-only-birthday parties, they’ve already hit thirty plus guests! They adore their many aunts and uncles, and will spend hours staring through family photos asking to tell stories from our childhood “best friends.” Of course, that inquisitive 7-year-old remembers the repetitive language I’ve learned to use, “Your brothers are your best friends for life! You have to stick by each other!” Of course, that hasn’t been the easiest with everyone spending even more time together lately. But that’s still the truth I want for my kids, and the truth I’m finding in myself becoming even clearer through adulthood. My adult siblings were the first ones we zoomed during quarantine, the first ones we called when engaged, pregnant, when celebrating or mourning. The ones whose hair I pulled, clothes I stole, diapers I changed, and ditched for “other,” friends through the years – have become the friends who never leave, and always have my back. I’ll never forget reading somewhere, “Siblings are most often the people you spend the most time with on earth. Your spouse and children come later, you usually out live your parents, and friends and neighbors change through the seasons. Siblings, your shared-blood companions, are with you the longest.” How beautiful is that! It makes us think about our siblings as blessings we’ve been given. I know I’m blessed enough to have seven of them! Seven best friends who were birthed from the same place, raised under the same roof, by the same mom and dad. That alone bonds our psyches in ways no one else will be able to understand. That’s what I hope we remember this summer. I hope we remember how irreplaceable those blessings are in our lives, and ours in theirs. I hope we treasure our sibling tribes in whatever shape or size they come in. I hope we remember there’s no completely perfect or completely messed up sibling tribe, there’s just our completely unique, irreplaceable one that God made specifically for us. I hope we pray for them, be there for them, reach out to them, learn from them, and never ever take those God given “best friends for life” for granted. As the words of Saint Pope John Paul II the Great remind us, “The greatest gift you can give your child is another sibling.” Praise God for our sibling tribes, our best friends, our greatest gifts.
Pictured here is my tribe exactly a week ago, celebrating the joys of life together :) Wishing you many pictures of the same!
May 17th, 2020. One brother graduating law school, one graduating high school. Taken at our parents LakeHouse.