Play On!

“Friends are the siblings God never gave us.”

—Mencius

In some places, marriages are still arranged. That such marriages work out at all is a miracle of sorts.

Ditto with brothers and sisters.

Did baseball brothers Joe and Dom DiMaggio like each other? Did movie queen sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Haviland tolerate each other well? Is not the nature of siblinghood loaded with testy probabilities?

Growing up with siblings contains such microcosmic dynamite sticks as who gets the larger piece of cake or whose bedroom is nearer the bath!

Vying for parental attention during the evening meal can develop the political wiles of a bright kid and be an attribute that later serves him or her well in business or even the White House. The honing of sharp political claws depends much on temperament and environment.

“I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers — it makes them siblings, and gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood are conditions people have to want, and work at.”

—Maya Angelou

Siblings have no irresistible compulsion to love each other any more than two different drivers emerging from the Holland Tunnel.

Growing up in the same house with a brother or sister can produce people who love each other life-long or detest each other.

Today a friend told us of his sister who hasn’t spoken to her siblings for years!

Undoubtedly, the way the parents got along together affects their children permanently. The qualities of siblings’ education and the attention they attract to themselves in their careers can have great effects.

For 3,796 weeks, I have not lived anywhere near my sister, and during that time, we have spent but a few hours together. We hardly know or dig each other. At 17, I went to Massachusetts for education. Thereafter, I was in the Navy for four years, and I lived in New York City and Europe during my singing career. Since 1980, I have lived and taught in Central Florida.

Jealousy can be the big bad wolf that alienates siblings — in that case, the sooner they are separated, the better for all concerned.

Sometimes one sibling may compulsively and unwisely reveal private matters in his life to the other. This sharing of ammo takes for granted enormous trust in the other and is often a calamitous mistake.

Advice sought from one sibling by the other usually comes to nothing.

Many siblings are remembered historically, i.e., the Wright brothers, the Gabor sisters, the dancing Astaires, the singing Osmonds, The Jackson Five, baseball’s Alous, football’s Mannings, Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland, the Fondas, the Barrymores, the Rockefellers, the Brontes, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Pointer sisters, the Marx brothers, the Smothers brothers, tennis’ Williams sisters and McEnroe brothers, baseball’s Dean brothers and DiMaggio brothers, Shirley McLain and Warren Beatty, Romulus and Remus, etc.

Would any of the above have been better off, or less memorable, without siblings?

Would you?

We’ll never know the details of the shared lives of siblings. Judgment and condemnation of siblings by each other is not only unfortunate, but is the ultimate sign of failure in a civilized family.