Sibling rivalries in my childhood shaped who I am today
Maddie Grigg writes a weekly column for The People’s Friend, the oldest women’s weekly magazine in the world. She specialises in flights of fancy and has published three books.
It’s my big sister’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Sally!
She’s sixteen years older than me and the gap when I was growing up seemed huge. She and my second sister, who is fourteen years older than me, were young women living away from home by the time I can remember them.
I was the baby in a big family, living on the land in a rural village. It was an idyllic upbringing and I have much to be thankful for. I was the youngest of five, brought up on dairy farm down a country lane edged with campions and gypsy lace, on the edge of a golden-stoned village in Somerset, England.
The third sister is eight years older than me and my only brother is six years my senior. I shared a double bed with the third sister, who would read me Don Quixote when I was eight and let me have a walk-on part with my deer with two strings in her legendary puppet shows.
My brother I hated, and the feeling was mutual. He disliked me because I was annoying, messed up his train set and had crushes on his friends. I couldn’t stand him because he would tease me (in one oft-quoted family story, he tricked me into eating a snail, complete with shell, which he’d found minding its own business on the side of the road). He also had a cooked breakfast when I had to make do with Weetabix.
The slights, now, seemed enormous then. But, in the grand scheme of things, I count myself extremely lucky, especially in a world where poverty and horrors are not confined to the Third World. Family life is not necessarily what it’s cracked up to be.
In my family, my brother was spoiled because he was the only boy. I was indulged because I was the youngest. And all our lives the two of us have been getting away with it.
I remember yelling at my brother when he had me in a headlock while mother and father were doing the milking and we were meant to be watching Animal Magic that if a policeman said I was allowed to kill him, I would. (Note the nod to the law, I wasn’t completely stupid. I wanted to commit a crime but without the punishment.) I am ashamed to say that when I was ten and he was critically injured in scooter accident, I really wanted him to die. Fortunately, he didn’t. Now we’re the best of friends.
My sister’s birthday got me thinking about sibling rivalry and whether the position you are in your family can affect you as you are growing up, and even have a bearing on the person you are now. I think it did for me. I still try, one way or another, to always get what I want. There is no such word as can’t and anything is possible. I eat too quickly because, in the back of my mind, is a memory of me dropping something from the table and getting back up to find one of my siblings had stolen two of my roast potatoes. Being the youngest of a bright bunch, I also was expected to do well at school and go on to university. So I didn’t. Thus began the birth of a quiet rebel.
Did you have a sibling rivalry when you were growing up? Share your stories with us in the comments below.
To read more of Maddie Grigg’s work, please visit her blog here.
If you have a story to share please get in touch at melody@oversixty.com.au
Related links:
9 heart-warming quotes about siblings
What your ranking in the family pecking order says about you
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