Avoiding the Subject

Do you remember how just a few blogs ago I mentioned how many movies I watch? Something like 25-30 a month. Well it seems I have had the same four movies from Netflix for weeks and I haven't watched nore than a few minutes of any of them. Why? I HAVE A LIFE NOW. I have no time for movies. I have found something far more enagaging and exhilerating. . . But why go into that now?

On to safer topics. Are you the oldest child in your family? Being the oldest child in a large family is one of those things that you accept while you’re a kid at home but only after years do you realize how profoundly it influences your entire personality, your maturity, your common sense and your ability to succeed in life. In my case being the oldest of six has had a serious impact on every part of my life: my relationship with my siblings; my relationship with my parents; my own parenting; my career; my ability to mentor other people; and, of course, my relationships with women.

I can only speak to what it’s like being the oldest. I have no idea how it feels to be in a different position in the birth order.

It’s really beginning to be fun to see what being a big brother to my siblings has meant to them. -- Like I have a clue! -- For fifty years or more I just saw myself as one of the kids. It wasn’t until my sixtieth birthday when I received a card from my youngest brother saying he “couldn’t have asked for a better big brother” that it dawned on me that I was a big brother. When I was in school I didn't feel like a big brother becuase my siblings were an annoyance to me. I barely acknowledged them - Particularly my brother Bill. We were two years apart in age and a universe apart in everything else. Bill died last year at fifty-eight. At the time of his death he lived in a subsidized apartment where our Mom paid the rent. When he dropped to the pavement, he had something like 41 cents in his pocket. Other than some throw away furniture, he possessed nothing. His place was the worst shit hole I have ever seen. He was in miserable health. Obese. Smoked hand rolled cigarettes. Had no job nor any prospects. And did God-knows-what all day. Now, rewind the clock to high school and imagine how much our lives intersected. Not at all, of course. We never had a connection in our lives until the last few months of his life when we had poor health in common. The last time I saw him alive, he was so thrilled that I had come to see him. Next thing I knew he was gone. Very strange to have a total stranger as a brother. I have no clue who I was to my brother. I guess I was the one who set a standard he couldn't keep up with and he ended up throwing in the towel.

My younger brother and I are eight years apart. When I left for college at 18, he was 10 and barely existed to me. Forty years later we re-connected and it was like finding a twin that you never knew you had. I was single and so was he – both divorced – and my work travel allowed me to fly through Denver from time to time, so we made of point of seeing each other. We would have dinner and then drive through the foothills of the Rockies and talk. Lots of growing up and family analysis talk but mostly women talk – an area we each had a major lifetime focus. It has been delightful and very comforting. Reminds me of reading Portnoy’s Compliant when I was in my twenties, and thinking “Someone else thinks like I do (about women)”. (Read the book if you don’t follow me.) My younger brother and I have come to have a wonderful close relationship and I love him.

I can’t imagine how my sisters viewed me as an older brother. Maybe they'll tell us. Two of my sisters are alive. My eldest sister was severely retarded and lived about 31 years before she succumbed to Hodgkin’s Disease about fifteen years ago. My middle sister and I were always close - as close as I was to any of my sibs. We got good grades and were both sort of popular and were cynics. Funny how a bad attitude can be a bond between brother and sister. My youngest sister is 13 years younger than me and we had little interaction as kids and not that much more as adults.

I guess my siblings looked up to me or maybe they do now. Hell, maybe they resent me and think I’m an asshole. I don’t know. There were times during my working career that I felt totally distant from my brothers and sisters. My shrink makes the comparison to a race in which I am running with my siblings and eventually I get so far ahead that I lose touch with them and forget who I’m racing - In other words totally disconnected. Fortunately in the past few years the connection has come back – or has started up where there was none before.

Vhat does zis mean, Herr Doctor?