No one prepares you for the day your baby brother steamrolls past you in stature, a race that was unfair from the minute centimeters were added to his frame overnight. The day comes and goes so quickly and quietly that it takes a while to even realize that you can no longer fit his shoulders comfortably underneath your arm for family photos. Photos with him square in the back are now the norm, his newfound height keeping him perfectly in frame despite the shift. He towers over you by nearly a foot, a difference that somehow is still not comprehensible until you are standing in front of a mirror side by side, shocked by how such a thing could have passed you by.
The physical difference isn’t the only thing that has changed, both for you and for him, but this new change feels so inadequately representative of your dynamic as siblings—how could it be that the little brother that once conspired and maneuvered hundreds of stools, chairs, and climbs atop the kitchen counter with me to grasp dishes is now doing so alone on his own two feet with the simple stretch of his arm? It’s infinitely harder to grasp that the little boy that was too scared to sleep alone in the dark and who you couldn’t fathom possibly growing up suddenly filling out college applications and the last child living at home with mom? In every aspect, my brother is a symbolic token of both his and my childhood. If his is just now reaching the end, mine has slipped through my fingers years ago.
Watching just one younger sibling grow up has been taxing, and yet it simultaneously fills me with a kind of gratitude I have trouble relating to anything else. I consider what this process has been like for my older sister, who has experienced this two-fold. I wonder if it feels like deja vu, but perhaps the kind that never really leaves you while most cases are fleeting moments forgotten hours later.
A memory from our childhood that I think of most often and can recall in the greatest detail—not in regard to what time of year or minute detail, but rather the feeling—was when we all must’ve been under the age of 10. It was sometime in the afternoon, and at this age, our favorite thing to do was ride our bikes around the block. I can picture the exact route and curve of the sidewalks now, the house on the corner with hundreds of wind chimes made of stained glass on the porch and the sound of cars barrelling down the interstate a short distance away. In this memory, the colors are at full brightness, an oversaturated tint that lingers over my best memories. The ride is a short one, probably less than the time it would take you to pop a couple of bags of popcorn, but time is a difficult concept to grasp as a kid, so this I am less sure of.
My siblings and I brave this ride alone, something that is common in small towns like the one where we grew up. In a town of 5,000 people, it’s difficult not to look out for one another, especially when the kids you went to preschool with are the exact same people that you graduate high school with. You become part of a village. Today, for good reason, I imagine this happens less and less, another indicator that our childhood is farther behind in the rearview than our futures are ahead in the windshield.
We were riding along this route, racing and singing the theme songs of our favorite TV shows, when it began to rain. Light droplets at first, the kind that are refreshing on a particularly hot day, but we shriek and exclaim protests to the disturbance anyway. The remainder of the ride along the sidewalk and gravel is a quick one. There is no time to stop to pet the dog at the fence on the corner or to stop and say hello to other kids hanging out on the block. What begins as a sprinkling quickly evolves to a complete hail storm by the time we reach our house. We speed up our driveway to shelter under the garage, where our dad is waiting for us.
This is where the memory gets hazy for me and I walk the line of remembering what actually happened and what I made up years ago to fill the holes, so I’ll do my best to describe what followed accurately.
I think my dad is laughing when we finally settle underneath the roof, wiping water from our faces and tugging at the clothes sticking to our skin. His laughter I am certain of. Eventually, what started as protests and annoyance to the rain evolved into a desire to play and ride in the hail. A child’s line of decision-making is very flippant, don’t you think?
Rain isn’t uncommon in this area of Colorado, but the chances to rejoice in it are slim for fear of sickness and reasons alike. We ask for permission to continue biking, but this time only within our cul-de-sac, begging for the opportunity to peddle underneath the torrent sheet of rain and hail. Soon enough, we’re out on the loop, giggling uncontrollably and feeling a type of joy I think is solely reserved for children, as I haven’t felt anything similar in years. I remember so distinctly what it was like peddling my feet as hard as I could with my siblings in my peripheral vision, waiting to reach the point where I could coast along on my two wheels. In my recollection, my sister is always slightly ahead of me while my brother trails marginally behind me; whether this is factual to what actually happened or merely emblematic of our birth order, I am unsure. The rain is cold, and shortly, I will be shivering in my clothes, waiting for my turn in the shower. But right then I am with my siblings, and the day is sweet.
If I had to pinpoint a particular memory that was reflective of my entire childhood, this would be the one. Lots of rain came our way as kids, much more than I would consider fair, and a kind that still makes me wipe water from my face and tug uncomfortably at the clothes sticking to my skin as an adult. But there was a lot of real joy there, the sort that is difficult to put into words without making me cry, though I doubt I could do so sufficiently through the tears. I feel really lucky to have known it and live as proof of it today, which is dichotomous to all the grievances I still hold. This memory is also exemplary of the fact that there wasn’t a single day of my childhood that I went through alone. With an older sister, I found a north star, and with my younger brother, I had a compass. We got through the rain together, and we felt joy together, and really that’s what childhood is. A collection of moments and memories just like this.
Being closer to graduating college than I am to when I graduated high school is an unsettling feeling. I’ve been able to find a lot of comfort in realizing these childhood dynamics and relationships don’t have to expire the second we cross over into adulthood, and I don’t want them to. Of course, there are circumstances and obstacles that I can’t predict or plan for in the future, but does that inherently mean the childlike joy has to end? I still find myself looking for it anyway.