Carol Duncan

Waiting for Daddy

Wow, isn’t this potentially murky territory.  The love/hate relationship we can have with our own flesh and blood.  I have three older brothers.  The eldest one I don’t actually remember living in the same house as.  He’s about 12 years older than me and he left home about 14 or 15 to accept an apprenticeship.  Funnily enough, he is the one that I now have the closest relationship with.  My own two sons adore him.  It’s a great relationship all round.  The middle one I get on well with, but he keeps to himself a bit … it’s fine, no problems, whatever.  But the one closest in age to me – at this stage let’s just say there is no relationship.  That’s a story for another day.  Maybe.

I didn’t want a daughter – god knows I was such a handful for my own mother that I dreaded the thought of it!  And so I was spared – I have two sons.  They’re still little, just 7 & 8 years of age, but they light up my life.

My husband talks about the problems he had growing up with his older brother and I suspect that’s just the way life goes.  Siblings.  Can’t live with them.  Can’t shoot them.  (My mother used to say this about in-laws … again … a story for another day.  Maybe.)

The relationship between my own two sons swings wildly from love to warfare.  Sometimes I worry about it, I worry that one day they will only have each other and I desperately hope that nothing comes between them.  At least nothing of a permanent nature.  They’re such different people, as all our kids are I guess.  These two are classic first and second born children. Number 1 son is a little bit anxious at times, has a bit of a sense of entitlement ahead of his younger brother, bosses his brother around in the most outrageous fashion, when enraged by his ‘pesky’ brother’s antics demands of me, “Why do I have to have HIM?”  Son number 2 is a far more laid back character.  Funny, sunny, oh yes definitely ‘pesky’ and knows exactly which of his big brother’s buttons to push to light his wick.  But … would defend his big brother to the death.  Sometimes I wonder if this is “Sibling Stockholm Syndrome” – on more than one occasion Number 2 son has been known to offer himself up to save his big brother from getting in trouble, has begged me not to send his brother to quiet time – even when he has utterly deserved it for his behaviour towards Number 2 son!  We had a very funny incident when Number 1 son started kindergarten.  He had been coming home for a few weeks telling us about another boy at school who hadn’t been very nice to him.  This went on for quite a few weeks.  We went off to school one afternoon to pick him up and Number 2 son tore out of my grip, ran up to the first small boy he saw and shouted, “Don’t you be mean to my brother!”

And yes, I know, there are a million books on ‘raising boys’, ‘sorting out siblings’, ‘pecking order’ and so on and so forth.  Personally, I prefer to engage with these two pint-sized manlets when they become to aggrieved with each other and discuss their ‘problems’, try to help THEM sort through their own issues (sometimes complete nonsense) and sometimes … just sometimes … I tell them to go sort it out themselves!

My deepest wish, though, is that these two fine little boys will grow up to be fine young men who are always there for each other regardless of the challenges that are thrown at them as individuals, and as brothers.