If I had a brother…

Most of the 37 years I’ve been on this planet I’ve really enjoyed being an only child. I tend to be quiet and bookish and don’t really like noise or games or, well, other children. I’ve never been sure if this was a chicken or the egg thing but it worked out. I was always the kid sneaking off to read. My parents, after they adopted me, fully intended to GET me a brother but they were told that, having GOTTEN one child, they now would go to the end of the list. Which was seven YEARS long. And back then they were already OLD for parents – my mom turned 31 a few weeks after they got me and my dad was closing in on 40. Another seven years would have made them REALLY old parents. They also had enough foresight to realize that a brother seven years younger than I was really wouldn’t do me any good. He wouldn’t be a play-mate, he’d be someone I’d have to baby-sit. So they decided to stick with the just the one which was, as I said, fine by me

Instead of having a fantasy that I had a twin sister out there I had a NIGHTMARE that I had a twin sister out there. I used to worry she’d show up and I’d have to change my hair color and style and get colored contacts so I wouldn’t look like her. I never had those “stay on your side” fights on car trips in the backseat. I had the WHOLE thing to myself. I could stretch all the way out and SLEEP. No one ever broke my toys or told my boyfriends embarrassing things. And when I was 16 I got a sports car. The ultimate symbol of being a spoiled only child.

BUT

There have been times, mostly as an adult, that I really wished I had a brother. A funny, supportive Waltons, Eight is Enough kind of brother to share the load, help out with my parents, visit them on holidays so I don’t have to feel guilty for every single one I miss. Someone who would give me that "hang in there -- only 5 more hours until Thanksgiving is over" look and refill my wine glass again without being asked. Somone for my husband to hide in the den with while my mother and I are fighting. But I have this feeling that if I actually HAD a brother it would suck. WHY? Well, lots of anecdotal evidence on other “State” adoptions that happened in Bakersfield the same decade I was adopted (as well as all the people I know who actually HAVE brothers). I was born of two smart teenage nerds* who were good at school but bad at birth control. My mother’s best friend’s daughter was born of a woman and one of five men; she couldn’t narrow it down any further than that. Her younger son was born of a teenager and a felon. I turned out to be a smart teenage nerd. Guess how THEY turned out? Yep. Slut and juvenile felon, respectively. My mom, after getting a baby and thinking she could mold and shape it to her will has, over the years, become a GREAT believer in the power of genetics. So taking into account the likely parentage of little bro (let’s give him a name shall we? The most popular baby name seven years after I was born was Michael so let’s call him Mike) and knowing my own parents I think it would have gone down like this:

• Mike would be my mom’s favorite
• Even though he’d been in jail
• She’d totally be in denial about the jail thing
• I’d still have all the responsibilities of visiting and caretaking even though Mike would still live in the same town
• My mom would have all kinds of excuses why it was easier for ME to drive 300 miles to do stuff than for Mike to do it, whatever IT was
• I totally would have had to baby-sit Mike all through my teenage years
• Mike would have read my diaries and listened in on my phone calls
• I would have gotten in trouble for hitting him after I caught him doing this
• After refusing to pay ME to get As because “that isn’t the way the world works” they would have rewarded Mike monetarily for getting Cs because he needed the encouragement.
• And since he’s the boy HE probably would have gotten the sports car
• By now he’d probably be married to some woman I couldn’t stand
• Some bitchy blond republican woman with a spray on tan and fake nails
• And have three bratty kids that aren’t nearly as cute or smart as my faux nieces and nephews
• Who I would have to buy presents for all the time
• And who would groan and complain if I got them books
• And who would never send thank you notes
• Not even after I gave up and just started sending money
• Every time I ever tried to talk to my mom about Mike or his bratty kids she’d defend him and make me want to kick things
• Even though he was a grown man with three kids Mike would still try and borrow money from me
• And then when I wouldn’t give him any he’d “borrow” it from my parents
• I would say “MAN I wish I was an only child” a lot.

*there is, of course, a part of me that is terrified that this was just state adoption agency propaganda and that they were white trash too. One of many reasons I have never been at all interested in trying to find my “real” parents is my DEEP ROOTED fear that I would find my mom sitting on the porch of her mobile home in Oildale, smoking and wearing thongs and a tube top that obscured half of the faded tattoo running down her left breast. She’d take a deep drag off her menthol cigarette and say, “Your father?  I haven’t seen that son of a bitch in years… so… you got any money?” At which point I would run away.