Relationships

Sibling Rivalry

Storms of silence

As long as I can remember, sibling rivalry played a role in my life. Oh, when I was small I didn’t call it sibling rivalry — I never thought in psychological terms since that was verboten in my family. I thought of it as that thing in my life that made me feel bad about myself.

I’m not sure, but I think sisters are more prone to rivalry than brothers. Maybe it has to do not only with talents and abilities but also with appearance and demeanor. And guys are not competitive when it comes to picking out the right dungarees and tees or gathering around the TV for football fiestas.

I grew up at a time when most girls thought of themselves as second-class citizens. Perhaps they didn’t articulate it, but they knew they were taking a back seat to their masculine relatives. Males ruled, and girls followed their lead. They, however, had one means of distinguishing themselves: they could attract the attention and delight of their parents by affecting a passive, non-combative demeanor. If they dressed appropriately, wore their hair in an acceptable style, and did their best not to rock the boat, they were prized for their ability to fit into the typical middle-class parental lifestyle of the ‘50s.

My sister was the prototype for this malleable, toadying behavior. I say this in the kindest way possible because she acted reflexively on cues from family members and social norms. She was just doing her thing to win the prize, and the prize was merely the subtle kudos that emanated from our parents. I would have done the same if my temperament had cooperated.

I was just the opposite. Predisposed to be irritable and oftentimes crabby, I led the family in undesirable behaviors. At the beginning I was just a crybaby; later on, I became school phobic. I was depressed and no one knew it, or if they did, no one wanted to acknowledge it. So I became the outlier in the family (although my father sent out not-so subtle signs of personality dysfunction that stemmed from his strict upbringing). But men were exempt from criticism back then so unfortunately the burden of dysfunction fell on my weak shoulders. My father refused to take responsibility for many things, among them the verbal abuse he heaped on us feminine underlings. I was ripe for blame what with my tendency to argue and slam doors.

I had little in the way of resources to fight off the simpering ways of my sister, who from an early age (she was four years older than I) had learned how to beguile my parents with her virtuous niceness. She was prettier than me, smarter, and more talented (she probably could have become a piano virtuoso were it not for my parents’ desires for her to attend college and take a traditional path to marriage), but the strongest force that I had to contend with was her demeanor.

She took on the role of peacemaker in the family, and it suited her since she handled domestic spats with the diplomatic tact of a United Nations official. This attribute formed the crux of her personality. She never said a cross word to anyone and always seemed to do the right thing at the right time.

Only once or twice did her behaviors get her into trouble. In junior high her handwriting became so tiny that no one could read it. Teachers complained, and my father disciplined her. I remember crying for her because of course, that was my role in the family: cry baby, the moody one who could not be trusted to polite diffidence. But I also cried because intuitively I knew that her handwriting expressed the pain that our dysfunctional family measured out.

As the years progressed, the two personalities — my sister’s and mine — clashed vividly. She went out of her way to flaunt her affability, and I allowed her to dominate the household. She spoke more than anyone at dinner conversations, and when she went away to college, my parents and I hovered eagerly by the mailbox waiting for her cheery, light-hearted letters. She was the light in the family, and I was the dim porch bulb someone forgot to turn off.

When she was not present, I had only myself to depend on, and for the life of me, I could not pull off my sister’s smiling-through-the graveyard style. I could not be her so I had to be someone else, and that someone else turned out to be a tortured worrier who embarrassed her parents and created an ambiance of fretfulness. At night sometimes when they thought I wasn’t listening, I’d hear them chatter about me and predict dire events: Would she go to college? Would she be able to marry? These were not discussed in kind and sympathetic ways but as problems that might require professional intervention.

I cannot remember the exact questions posed, but the implication that I was less than normal was there in technicolor. How then could I avoid the ugliness of sibling rivalry? It was inevitable that I would want to be the person most revered in the house.

Of course the rivalry was one-sided. She didn’t envy me. Why would she? What fool in the world would want to be a person who absorbed blame through her pores as if it were soot from the skies? Moody me had evolved into a self-critical person whose actions frequently spoiled things. For that reason, I became a magnet for dislike. And even when my parents were not blaming me, there was still one other person who pointed the finger at me. And no, it was not my sister. She rarely interacted with me. It was I who took up the hobby of self-hate.

So as the blame grew in one sister and the older sister spread her wings, sibling rivalry became a constant in my life as a teenager and then as an adult. It was only when my parents died 10 years ago that sibling rivalry took its last dying breath, and I’m not sure why. Was it because there was no longer anyone to impress or embarrass? Or was it the result of a lengthy estrangement caused by conflicting views of how our parents’ last few years should unfold? Perhaps the simple reason is that sibling rivalry ran its course, ran out of steam, and dissolved like unpleasant odors in a newly painted house.

Whatever the reason, a bitter-sweet ending took hold. Although sibling rivalry no longer plays a part in my life, I’ve somehow lost the sister I wanted to emulate for so long. Beset by personal problems — a sick husband and an unhappy daughter — she collapses periodically under the weight of these challenges and seeks the company of a professional — an outsider, someone she hires to “keep her company.”

I would like to think that if I were 2,000 miles closer, she might ask me to visit her, but I somehow doubt this. And this pandemic doesn’t help bind the ties. She doesn’t call unless I do, doesn’t text, or acknowledge her sister for more than a few minutes. Something sinister has taken the place of sibling rivalry, but I don’t know what to call it.