I’m a bit pensive today…. This may be due to the subject matter that occupied my thoughts yesterday evening, a series of old impressions and feelings about my family, whom I dearly love, as long as it is from a distance….. No, actually, I do love them, such as they all are, for they are legion…. I think if possible, my mom would have produced an entire baseball team, rather than merely a basketball squad…. Though it is hard to think about, for a son, or a daughter, my parents MUST have enjoyed the physical aspects of marriage, and more than just a little bit, for they certainly “issued forth” with more than their share of children; there were seven of us, in total, though two of us died soon after birth (my long-lost, unknown, but always loved brother Scott, and sister Emily, both of whom died within hours of their birth, sometime during WWII, while my father was overseas, fighting in the Pacific theater…..)

It’s strange, actually, to sit here in tears, crying for two people I never got to know, but, I guess I’m just a closet softie. If both of the babies had lived, life would have been very different for me… It’s quite possible that, instead of being the middle child of five, I would have been the baby of the brood, with two older brothers, and two older sisters to torment me unmercifully, as did I and my siblings for my youngest brother…. Perhaps I’d have been the fifth of seven, as it did turn out, but, that, too, would have made me a different person than I am…. As middle child, the pressure is to survive the eldest siblings machinations, while still finding ways to make my younger siblings’ lives miserable… It’s what brothers are for, you know…

Actually, I always thought growing up in the middle gave me an advantage, that of learning to develop the use of brains over brawn…. Since I wasn’t big enough to fend off the older siblings, I had to learn fast, and develop my mental flexibility, to be able to outguess them consistently… That wasn’t hard with my older sister, but, my brother was pretty smart himself, and gave me some fits before I figured out how to manipulate him… You see, the middle child is in a difficult position… If I fought with my older sibs, I suffered pain, from their retaliation…. If I fought with the younger ones, the risk came from the possible intervention of my parents, who always tended to side with the underdog, ( always the younger of anyone involved in such altercations…) So, you see, we middle children learn to develop a larger, more flexible set of mental and physical skills than do our siblings, just to keep our sanity in the dog-eat-dog world of large family dynamics….

What occurred to me last night was the following query, to wit: had Scott and Emily survived, would I have been the same person I turned out to be? Since it is, relatively, a moot point, (it didn’t happen, after all….), it enters the realm of unwarranted, and therefore useless, speculation, at best…. In other words, a waste of time, for the most part…. I don’t regard the time I spent on this as wasted, however…. I did find out a few things about myself I hadn’t known…. such as, I really do miss them, even though I never knew them… I think I would have enjoyed having an older sister named Emily, especially given my predilection for the poetry of Miss Dickinson….. and who wouldn’t have enjoyed a brother named Scott, who would, perhaps, have been my champion, my protector against my other older brother, Tim, who picked on me without mercy, as was his right and duty, and fought with me incessantly..

I guess it goes to show that growing up in a large family has its ups, and downs, and advantages versus disadvantages; it seems to me, though, to have been well worth it, if only for the socialization and interpersonal skills it develops in those children, from living in a small copy of society, with all its different pressures and dynamics.  Kids from smaller families, and only children, don’t get that same inundation in relationships, or the immersion in a melting pot of different personalities, thereby learning to deal with that issue, before having to do so out in the real world, outside the home, where one is, to a certain extent, protected from the vagaries of reality….

Okay, pensiveness fulfilled, and thus, easily dismissed… Though it isn’t my usual intro, it seems to have worked fairly well to break the ice for the day, with a good five paragraphs of material, all of which, though a bit personal, and irrelevant to much out in the BBR, or Reality at Large, nonetheless fulfills all legal requirements, and fills up the necessary space at the top of the page….  😉

Shall we Pearl?….

When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea.

— Edward Bulwer Lytton (1805-1873) — When Stars are in the quiet Skies

Hmm… see, pensive…. Onward, ever on, he cried!….
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