If we'd had a brother....

I was a disappointment

Dad wanted a boy. The displeasure of having his first born be a girl flowed over me in waves until his death. I spent my life trying to please him as a son would have. But I would never be good enough. Women were meant to serve their husbands and keep house and watch children.

You were a disappointment

They thought the odds of 50/50 would certainly bring a son into the world. And even through he would not be first born, he would be the first born son. Our name would continue through his children. But you were a girl. It was as if something changed between them. There would be no more children and no sons. I could feel mom's relief that she'd not have to go through another pregnancy. I could feel dad's anger and frustration.

Positive vs Negative

It was in mom's blood. She was AB negative and dad was O positive. The chance of a "blue" baby was high so said the 1950's doctors (all men). There was a chance with me and you, but the "odd's" were that it would certainly happen in the third birth. So our parents accepted their misfortune. But was it really the blood? I've heard almost nothing about that concern in my adult life. No one said "If one parent is positive and the other negative - they should not reproduce!" Yes some children are born with complications of blood matching, but they live. So in reality, the odds were much higher that the third child would be a boy than of the child being born "blue." (I think that meant sickly to them)

If they had tried again

Dad would have felt that God, and the world, and all the goodness he'd ever done would bring him his son. The child he would have loved more than us. The golden child who could get away with much more than us. He would be taught that men are indeed better than women and should be in charge. We would have loved having a baby to play with, and a boy would have been a novelty. We would have observed the attention Dad's mom gave the boy over us. Instead of sewing us matching dresses, he would have had little suits which we would then match. From the moment they brought him home he would be held more. We would be told not to touch his toys, but to share ours. We would become even more invisible as mom came to life because she had finally given dad what he wanted most in life. We would be told to be quiet for the baby. If the baby cried when dad was studying, we would be told to keep quiet and to keep the baby quiet, a skill we would never have. We wanted him to cry. We wanted him to make them push him aside as they had us.

Growing up three

We always heard that three children would fight more. Two would gang up against the other. Sibling rivalry would always come down to our fault and be punished accordingly, even if it he'd sided with one or the other of us against the other. Your brother is younger than you. You have to be more grown up.  We would have been three and five then. Children who were expected to take care of ourselves. The battles were the same between us, as it was growing up without a brother. Each of us would feel the other must be getting what little more attention there was left. We would have been wilder. And maybe, just maybe we would have formed our own tribe, working side by side create chaos. Maybe we would have teamed up to lock mom out of the house to destroy the kitchen (as I actually did) bringing mom not only anger but fear that our brother asleep in his crib might be our next target. But we would never do that. The punishment dad would inflict on us would be much worse than the spankings and swats with the belt.

Once he was walking

We would have lost interest in all the wonderful things mom and dad saw him doing, in favor our own wonderful things. A bond would have formed between us that would follow us into our adult lives. We would have stood up for each other against other kids. We would be fiercely protective of each other. Grandma would call us the twins. We would have ridden our bikes together. We would have climbed trees together. We would have used our combined influence to get real juice, and fruit and a bit more money to buy candy and comic books. Our barbie's would be friends, living together in their makeshift cardboard box home. Ken would be our gardener, cook, driver. We would dress up our Barbies for themselves, not for Ken. Sometimes we would place Ken in naughty places, posed in naughty ways and blame our brother. Certainly little girls did not have nasty thoughts. It would have been one of the only lies that mom and dad might have believed, until mom caught us mid-flush in a turd soup toilet. Even getting caught would have made us happy. Being bad was more fun than being ignored.

School

Being left behind was made so much worse for you as mom did nothing to make you feel as special as I felt - finally away from mom and our brother. I would be noticed, I would make sure by doing some of the same naughty things we'd do around mom. My teacher would be frustrated with me (as she really was) because of my bad attitude and my not playing well with others. So coming home to my sister was the best part of my days. I would spend hours teaching you what I'd learned, so when you got to kindergarten you were a rock star among idiots. Once we were both in school our bond only got stronger. Once our brother started school, we were told to look out for him which we did no do. Sometimes we would pretend we did not hear him as he called out to us. We did not share our knowledge with him, but we did put ideas in his head. Ideas like how much more fun it was to play dress up in dresses. Duh, that's why its called "DRESS UP". We would get into mom's makeup to make him pretty, and mom's heels to make him taller. We would call our parents to come see how beautiful our brother looked (and we WOULD make him feel beautiful). Our father would be furious, We would be sent to our rooms without supper (we'd have already hidden food in our rooms) and our brother would be scrubbed and defrocked and told that no son of his would dress up like a girl. But he would never quite get over the attention we gave him and playing our games was the only time we did.

Games and Dare

Don't climb the trees became how high can you climb? Don't dig in the flower bed became him officiating  Barbi and Ken burial. Don't color on the walls became, Don't worry crayons wash right off! Here is one of mom's towels - just rub it around. We would cheat at the game of Life, hide his army men, If he had any tears in the knees of his pants, we would make them much bigger. And when he got his first bike, we took turns riding it out of his reach while he screamed. We would play hide and seek without the seek. When mom could not find him before dad was to get home sent her out into the neighborhood to all the houses we thought we'd seen him wonder off to, We convinced him that insects were edible. He was gullible and we felt superior until the day we realized what he had that we did not. He could pee standing with his little fire hose. We did not have a part like that. Were did our's go?  Were our's cut off when we were babies because we were girls?  We would perfect the art of the standing pee.