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.