Siblings

Today Susan posted about her desire for her girls to be friends in addition to just being siblings. This is one of my greatest hopes for my boys as well.

I feel fortunate to have my brother as my friend. Jake and I have always been close, even now that we are separated by 4,500 some miles. And the more I think about it the more I'm convinced it's solely due to the way Mom and Dad raised us. We were required to be respectful of one another at all times, and we simply had to get along. I recall one particular instance where we had gotten into some kind of fight and my Mom forced us to sit together on the couch, holding hands. No TV, no books. (The ultimate punishment for each of us, respectively) Somehow, it worked.

Our personalities are/were different and we certainly disagreed on many issues. If we had free time, I usually wanted to read while he wanted to play outside. But we did manage to play together quite a bit, gender issues aside. I played with my Strawberry Shortcakes and he took on the role of Huckleberry Pie and various masculine pets. He played GI Joe, and I played Lady J or Scarlet. And of course his Star Wars action figures were easy to share -- I liked Leia, Yoda, and I think Chewbacca.

What kept us close as we grew older and found different hobbies? The fact that we were only one grade apart and were therefore usually doing the same things? The fact that we both loved volleyball? That we were both in AWANA and Sunday school and had to memorize a lot of the same stuff? That our school was so small we ended up having a lot of the same friends?

I don't know what did it. I'm just glad, glad, glad. There is no one else in the world, including my husband and my best friends, who "gets" me the way Jake does. Half the time we end up thinking the same thing, and we can read each other's faces as clearly as if there were print on our foreheads. I guess 30+ years of private jokes will do that. =)

And now I need to seek out that recipe for success and pray that my boys are going to keep up what Josh said yesterday. "I love my brother. He is a good brother to me."