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.