Power of Siblings - April 2, 2011 - Iroquoia

Sibling rivalry is an odd mechanism. One would think it would ease up with the passage of time, what with no longer competing for the attention of the same parent, getting on in the world and so on, but it surfaces in odd places. Sometimes this can be a good thing, sometimes not. I wonder how much of it is simply a hind brain sort of thing and how much is mitigated by sober second thought. I mean there is no point in comparing your life to that of a sibling on an entirely different plane, unless maybe you hate your life. If one of the people jumping off the proverbial cliff is a sibling then are you more inclined to jump too?

Suppose, just suppose, that one sibling likes catching snakes. No one knows why exactly. She has had a thing for snakes all her life. She finds them kind of groovy. Her mother, who HATES snakes has had to suffer many times as the daughter dragged home a snake and said, look! She doesn't think twice about picking them up.

Once she picked up a snake in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland. Imagine, if you will,  a bright green hill atop which is perched a ruin of a castle in bone white. Girl picks up snake and shows snake to boy. Boy turns as pale as the stone behind him. Poland actually has a venomous snake. Who knew? As it turned out, Poland also having ten trillion boring ole garter snakes, no tragedy ensued.


Now, true, the Bruce Peninsula also has a poisonous snake. Yon snake-loving-sibling knows all about it. Yes, the mighty Massasagua Rattler is not to be trifled with - if you can find one that is. In fact, Dennis Lee wrote a poem about it: Mississauga Rattlesnakes eat brown bread/ Mississauga Rattlesnakes fall down dead/If you catch a caterpillar feed him apple juice/If you catch a rattler, turn him lose! Great skipping rhyme as it turns out.


Yer snake-loving-sibling KNOWS these things. She even feels an affinity for the poor ole Massasagua and wishes it well, wherever it is. Being a marginal life form on the brink of extinction slightly better documented then the Sasquatch has GOT to suck.


Anyway, lets suppose you have such a sibling. I mean she's been under the Mill Street bridge in Dundas in the fall and seen snakes puppy piling on the concrete to keep warm. She thinks its cute.


Yeah, OK, point being that you are the brother and you're three years younger and you're a GUY, right? Right!


So, there we were hiking and everyone was suddenly all knotted up looking intently over at something. Had to be neat, yeah? As I drew near, down went my brother in pursuit of the something. As I drew nearer my heart thrilled. Snake! Oh yes! Snake in the early springtime = piece of cake!


Being cognizant of the pitfalls of sibling rivalry, I let my brother have at it. After all, he saw it first. Trouble was, he was not at all sure he wanted to catch a snake. Trouble was we had 6 kids who wanted to be up close and personal with the snake, to say nothing of me - Ye Snake-Loving-Sibling (see above).


Ergo, when a second snake made an appearance, thereby distracting the bro, and my hubby pointed out Snake #1 slouching off into the leaf mold, I went after it and I nabbed the thing. We Snake-Loving-Siblings do that sort of thing, gently but firmly, just behind the head. Your garter snake it not poisonous but it will fang you, most especially when mowing tall grass, just saying.

'Course sibling rivalry being what it is, the bro nabbed his 3 seconds later. Yes, sibling rivalry can be a bane but it also has its uses. I mean sometimes we all need a little motivation to get us going. I ponder that fact from time to time because this brother of mine has not seen much of me these past 10 years.We both have children. His oldest is 6 months older than my twins. One can't help but think about that.


His kids have not been out as much as mine have. His go to daycare, mine are homeschooled. He bought more into the bubble-wrap school of thought than I ever did but, of late, the bubbles have begun to pop. Thus, here he is, out with me and mine and also two other families, neither of which saw anything wrong with braving an Alberta Clipper across the top of Toronto for 4.4k of winter hiking.It sort of makes a person think hard about the benefits of re-defining "normal".


To have hung back and not caught that snake, that would have been bad. To have hung back and not hiked with us, that would have been bad also. The point is, we are siblings. We grew up together. We have much in common. Maybe I have a thing for snakes that he doesn't share but we both know that hiking is cool. We both really like to be out here. 

This was an interesting hike for us. It took us through our hometown. We passed the school and the church. We walked up Sydnham Hill. I'm not convinced that any of we children have a deep and abiding love of the town to Dundas but I do think we all love the escarpment. The entire charm of Dundas rests in the way it is nestled into the valley. Lucky for us that we grew up here and that much of the "mountain" was conservation land. Lucky for us that our parents took us out there. Good on us that we're taking our own children out there. 


I like to think that my brother is easing up a little on the bubble wrap. He got himself wrapped up in an urban cocoon. It nearly morphed him into something ikky. As he breaks out of the chrysalis, it is better that he learn to fly than to creep. We all have different definitions of flying, I grant you, but I am hopeful of having his children along on a hike in the not too distant future. 


Rivalry of any kind can be a very negative thing. In the age old dynamic of loser and winner, there are often hurt feelings; however, rivalry can also be positive. It can affirm our sense of self and it can make us brave.

If You Go Out to the Woods Today

This is the beginning line of the song about the Teddy Bear's Picnic. It is a catchy tune. The lyrics are appealing. I've heard it sung by Sharon Lois and Bram, I have heard it sung by my husband and I have heard it sung by the King's Choir of Cambridge. It has lasting appeal. It is one of those songs that an adult can hear over and over again without going immediately crazy and looking around for the off switch.

The song suggests that once upon a time people DID go out to the woods for such things as picnics. It is a nursery song and like all such songs can't have been too far off the mark in terms of plausibility. I mean of COURSE the teddy bears have picnics in the woods. Where else would they picnic?

We have been invited to a birthday party tomorrow. What with it being too rainy to hike, even for us, we've spent the morning indoors making presents. Yes, making them because the theme for this party is gifts made, re-used or recycled. I LOVE this theme. It appeals to me. It makes just as much sense as a Teddy Bear's picnic. I shall almost certainly adopt it as one of our own come the next big birthday bash in this neck of the woods.

We only have the one birthday bash. Our kids are all Easter babies, born within 2 weeks (and a number of years) of one another so a big bash just makes sense. I was a summer baby. I had back yard parties featuring various relatives and a fantastic cake made by my mother. My brother, born 3 days before me, and almost 3 years later, shared this party and I have always liked the concept.

We've been to our share of parties. A friend of mine lives in Toronto. She's my eco-friendly build a tire house friend so it was with some sense of fatalism that she caved into the birthday bash mania of the Toronto set. We've been to the bowling alley, seen the clown, visited the museum, done the indoor playground and even seen a movie. There was one house party in all of that and it was the best one. One could tell by how happy all the kids were. Problem with the exported birthdays, I find, is a lot of wasted pizza and cake and no regard at all for whoever has to clean up. They're somewhat artificial in my opinion and since they all follow the same script, well, one can get jaded even at the age of eight it seems.

Recently we went to an I'm a Year Old! party. The theme was "Curious George". When it was over, upon seeing a crumpled piece of paper and a few cake crumbs on the floor the child's mother wondered aloud if she could persuade the cleaning lady to come in on a Sunday afternoon. This family, I stress, has a dog and I do not exaggerate when I say a few. So, call me unfeeling but were I the cleaning lady I'd not feel at all ashamed of adding a hefty surcharge to the bill.

We made our debut on the party scene when my son turned 5. In honour of the occasion I draped a drop sheet under the table and let a bunch of boys go wild with some baking soda and vinegar. Also they had goo with which to make volcanoes. Surprisingly, some held back. They were worried about getting their hands dirty. Still, it was a good party.

The year after that my husband led a treasure hunt while I recovered from a C-section. That went well so we treasure hunted again the following year. Then, in search of something different, we made popguns out of dowel and PVC tubing. Last year it was a spy theme with black light and a laser ray maze. This year my sons asked for a party in the woods.

We've had some pretty cool parties but we had never exported one before. There is an advantage to catering out of the house in that one can set up things like laser mazes in advance. Also, if it rains then one has the option of running inside.

In this case the preferred venue was a ravine through which flowed a stream - the jump-able kind. Any other kind in spring is not a great birthday party venue, or canoeing venue, trust me on this one. The weather was holding out for about 12 degrees with the chance of rain. We decided to give it a go.

All our parties are open-ended things. We have friends who are local and friends who are not. So we tend to begin around 1 in the afternoon and then continue on through dinner. Dinner has always been make-it-yourself pizza. It's easy and the dough is refrigerator tolerant.

I find that in planning a birthday party a nice balance between organized activity and free play is desirable. Our boys wanted a survivor-man theme. We nodded thoughtfully and then went out to buy some rope.

Thus it was that on Saturday morning my children were all busy applying fabric to bits of broken concrete in order to make "fish" The fish had wire looped around them so that they could be speared. Yes, speared. Son #2 was not into hooking fish. He was into spearing 'em.

Now, what I love about kids is that if you tell one that a rock wrapped in fabric is a fish then it is a fish. No doubt about it. My youngest son accompanied us out to the woods that afternoon clutching his fish firmly while we tried out various methods of hanging the rope. After Son#2 had splashed in the stream and all kids were nice and soaked we had a rope that swung halfway over the stream and also, in my head, the concept of a rope ladder. Thus did we return home, dripping, son #3 still clutching his fish.

The woods trip also yielded 2 pieces of plastic, bright yellow, about half a meter by half a meter that someone had left behind. A swift moment with google on Friday night had revealed a couple of nifty initiative games, one of which involved a radioactive field and having to cross it using 3 shields. In the yellow plastic I had 2 of my 3 shields. We used an eco-shopping bag as the third.

That night we made more fish. My husband speared candy bugs on a stick and threw a few other items into a goody bag. There is no escaping goody bags. Ours tend to the edible side and the sparse. 20 goody bags is a lot of goody. The kids sat down with a bunch of toothpicks and painted them various colours using markers. There were going to represent bugs inside a toxic waste circle. The trick, of course, was to remove the toxic waste in order to be able to hunt the bugs. Some toothpicks were bright pink, others brown. This was an exercise from a David Suzuki book to show the effectiveness of camouflage. We loaded everything into backpacks and awaited the dawn.

Early in April my oldest son turned 10. On that day we were hiking. In honour of the occasion my husband and I together made a 10 layer Escarpment Cake, with green icing. Layer 10 was a Prince Polo wafer bar and a vanilla sprinkle doughnut from Tim Horton's. The cake was chocolate and vanilla layered with Nutella and raspberry jam. It sat in its decadence on top of a cookie sheet in the back of the van until lunch at which point it was cut up with a swiss army knife and handed out. The hill, we later discovered, is a Burlington ghost hill, complete with alien sightings and magnetic hill. Ignorance is bliss? Perhaps.

The other thing we did that walk was to hang various presents from trees. The treasure hunt theme dies hard. I am OLD, Brother William, and I still go for a good treasure hunt.

For the birthday bash we made another Escarpment Cake. Again, we put it in the van to await the end of the party. Some of the kids were leaving directly from the woods so we figured this was a good way to end the birthday party proper. Picnics really are not all that complicated. Beginners should always begin with the tailgate kind, in my opinion, because they are stress-free. Advanced tail-gate picnics involve picnic tables in parks. Advanced picnicing involves plastic dollar store goblets that look sort of like glass, juice that looks sort of like wine and a flotilla of canoes, but this is another story.

Back at the woods my husband laid a hunt for "tokens" (popsicle sticks with symbols on them) and I set the fish, strung the rope and laid out the climbing net. We had out toxic waste circle from the day before neatly marked out with bright orange yarn We were ready.

Up the stream from the bridge came Johannes with the guests and ta dah! one party was in full swing.

My kids tell me it was the best one of theirs ever. I actually agree mainly because it is the first one in which they took an active role in planning and building the props. I hope this trend continues on into next year because, frankly, right now we are out of ideas.

Well, mostly...

These things also have a template. It goes something like this:

• Keep the activities simple. Remember that string and black light can entertain for HOURS so moving from one activity to another at 15-20 minute intervals is undesirable. In fact, I have been to Beaver camps that do that and frankly, I find it annoying. There is no time to actually ENJOY an activity on that sort of a schedule.
• Getting hung up on food is inadvisable - make lots of cake. Have emergency rations in case someone actually does calm down enough to actually want to eat and relax.
• Trust your guests to have a good time. Simply getting out of the movie theatre script and into the home party script will be exciting enough to provide for a memorable experience.
• Make your activities ones that will engage the interest of an adult or two because you want a co-operative spirit here between kids and adults. You want mingling of the mildly interested but non-intrusive kind. 
• Have fun. Stress is not fun and it does not count if at the end of the day someone is in tears.

I have yet to find at which age the child will want to branch out on his own and export the party to a friend's basement. I suppose that day is coming but that too is another story. Until that time comes, we'll stick with the woods.