Sibling Reveille
Amy sits in the passenger seat as Baxter sleeps during the majority of the long ride back to Toronto from Maine. I’ve become a chauffeur. As a new dad, I’m noticing countless, minute occurrences that I would never have considered before, like when your wife gets into the backseat while you’re left in the front alone (without a black cap). Fortunately, for the majority of our last day’s drive, I had the pleasure of sharing the sights with Amy while she rode up front with me.
While driving together, we discussed the possibility of growing our family. Our friend, Stephanie, whom we had stayed with in Maine, was pregnant with her second child faster than either she or her husband could say, ‘perhaps we should try for a second’. By their calendar, Baxter would be on the fast track to having a sibling in a few months!
As the youngest of three in my family, I am the one who got away with murder and enjoyed the breakdown of family rules when the chaos became difficult to control. Amy is senior to her brother. Both of them were brought up with strict morals but benefitted from the lessons only siblings can teach each other such as the art of negotiation and communication (read: arguing), defensive and offensive combat skills, and the granddaddy of them all, sharing. Sure parents can teach all these things to a singleton, but not with the impatience, imprudence and immaturity of a sibling.
So before Baxter’s arrival, Amy and I decided there would be another Bond, something that could not have been further from our minds until this visit with Stephanie in Maine and seeing 18 month-old Amos casually poke his brother, the innocent, 4 month-old Obi, for two days. Beyond the competition for attention was a simple, sweet love and affection, a kind of abusive adoration.
As we return home, oblivious to the fact that Baxter will soon SCREAM during the ride from the Toronto suburb of Pickering to Queen Street, downtown, we’re once again thrown back into the blinding ignorance of that fraternity we barely feel valid to claim membership to, parenthood.
