The Younger Brothers

I have 3 brothers acquired over the years.  One in 1948, one in 1952, one in 1960.  That makes 14 years between me, the oldest, and the youngest.  We are rather strung out.  Brother number 2 was born after the death of our sister, who died of the RH factor, after being on the earth for a week or younger brothersso.  But by the time brother #2 came along they had come up with stuff to combat the RH and he, success story that he was, was written up in some medical journal.

We are all rather nuts in some way or the other.  As the psychoanalyst, D.W. Winnicott says, if you have one mother and 8 children, you have eight different mothers.  This is true; we all have different perceptions of our mother.  But we agree, even with these differences, that she is crazy.  Or maybe she is evil.  We have discussed this matter and have not really reached a conclusion.

I think she is crazy.  Brother number 1 thinks she is Evil (or at times he thinks this).  Brother #2 believes she is capable of any manner of horrible acts.  And brother #3 would just as soon she went away.  Our different perceptions of her are probably related to the differing reasons we have for believing she is crazy and/or evil.

The thing that has kept us in contact with each other over the years as we went our different ways and to different parts of the state is the shared experience of having been raised by our crazy mother and impotent father.  Without these two we would not have much in common.

We are rather like those poor soldiers flung together in the same trench from different parts of the universe; and as they undergo the terrors of war, they bond, as they say.  After the war, they go their different ways and sometimes never contact each other again because really they had nothing in common except the shared misery of a miserable experience.

 One must face the fact that genetics is a crap shoot and just because you are related to another person by blood does not mean you have any deep elective affinity with that person as another person or soul.  Though of course you are probably all human beings. And in that respect, as much as you may dislike, fear, or simply hate, another of the same blood, you are bound by that blood to respect the fact that the blood relation is, in fact, a human being, something not as easily accorded a biological stranger.

This is no small or easy thing.  Many are much nicer and more pleasant, courteous and respectful to complete strangers than they are to members of their own family.  I think this much more the “norm” than many might imagine.  We say things to members of the family that we would never dare to say to others, unless we wish to get shot or be beaten to a pulp.  And we do not usually get shot or beaten to a pulp because we are family.

Sometimes this may well be a terrific mistake.

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