Siblings Retreat #sbf2014

Some people are fortunate to live near their siblings. They get to see them regularly, and they have close ties because they interact together frequently and participate in family activities like birthdays and anniversaries.

When you don’t live near your siblings, but want to maintain a close relationship, you have to be more creative. I haven’t lived near my brothers for over 25 years, but we were close growing up. My siblings are intelligent, talented, charming individuals and we enjoy getting together.  There is something about growing up together that creates a language of shared experiences, and only your siblings can speak that language with you. When you don’t get to interact, you can begin to feel a little lonely.

In addition to being intelligent, talented, and charming, my siblings both have extremely demanding, high-profile careers that keep them almost continually busy. Since we live so far from each other, almost 2,000 miles, we have had to find ways to stay connected. Birthday celebrations, holidays, and Sunday dinners with mom aren’t possible, so we have enacted the biannual siblings’ retreat.

Every two years, my two brothers and I meet somewhere for a long weekend. My youngest brother usually selected the location (with input from the rest of us) and accommodations.  He generally checks out the restaurants at the location because we are all foodies, and sometimes he will plan an excursion. It’s important that we not over-plan, but we usually have one activity to look forward to while we are there.

There are also some rules, mostly related to who can attend these weekend trips. We call it a siblings’ retreat for a reason. No spouses, partners, significant others, BFFs, children, or parents (especially not mom, because we always spend a portion of our time talking about how great she looks, how well she is doing, and how amazing she is). It is also important that, while on retreat, you embrace the “whatever”. It may be traffic, a slower culture, new foods, whatever. You have to go with it and embrace it.

We also have a rule that you don’t have to do absolutely everything together.  For example, I am a morning person. I wake up pretty cheerful and I like to be on the go.  I like to work out before I begin my day, rather than at the end of it. And I can be nauseatingly chipper when my brothers are zombies.  So if they want to take a long walk at 10:00pm, well, I’m pretty much done by then. They go.  I get ready for sleep. And I usually don’t get any takers on my 6:00am walk to the beach, because they aren’t ready to be moving that early. I go for my walk; they get up later for their workouts. The important thing is to just relax and go with it.  We always meet up for meals, so it’s all good.

One of my brothers is an artist, and a very talented one too. He loves art and architecture, and museums and walking tours. For my other brother and me, well, we are fine if there is historical significance or narrative, but we can over-dose on art pretty quickly, so my artistic brother will suggest something like touring the Santa Barbara Mission, and save the modern art museum for a time when the rest of us want to sit at the pool. And that’s all good, too.

As chatty as we are together, we still need time to detox from the noise and to have a quiet moment for reflection. We have a lot to reflect on too, like how incredibly lucky we are to enjoy each other so much, and to have such loving and generous spouses, partners, significant others, BFFs, kids, and parents who encourage us to take the time to reconnect. We are also lucky that we want to help each other change and find new direction as we get older and our priorities change. We love to dream about a retirement “business” we can start together, and dedicate our collective talents to making the world a better place. Will we actually do that? Probably not, but it is such fun to talk about doing it. And, well, don’t say “never”. It’s always a possibility. Just saying.

A wonderful thing about being with my siblings is that we know each other really well, so no one bothers with pretense. We know our faults and strengths, our hang-ups and our battles, and we’ve accepted each other’s limitations long ago. Since all that is a given, we are able to just relax and enjoy. Takes all the pressure off and nobody cares if we are perfect, because we already know that we aren’t. Also, we tend to not bottle stuff up, so there aren’t any unspoken angers, hurts, resentments, or regrets. No one is angry about what happened in 1975. We dealt with it in 1975.

Mostly though, we laugh, talk, eat, drink good wine, talk some more eat and drink some more, maybe confess or advise a little, then eat, drink wine, and talk some more.  Oh, we work out some too…because at least one of us struggles with the law of expansion (me, my brothers look great). One by one we are coming to the realization that it’s time to develop the next generation rather than ourselves. We aren’t as young as we used to be, but after every siblings’ reunion, I think we are better.