Sibling rivalry a family battleground
Nelson College for Girls filmmaker explores her relationship with her siblings.
We all have tapes filled with the fuzz of white noise stashed away in what becomes known as the ‘family drawer’.
In my family the tapes of me and my three siblings were filmed by my mother, my father, or occasionally by my older brother, though these are shaky and spasmodic on account of my brother being so excited to get hold of the camera.
These are the tapes of our childhood revealing us in all our glory. We are screaming demons, pirates and gypsies dressed in the old clothes from the dress up trunk. Even now we’re still not sure where those old clothes actually came from.
The Top Secret Files of the Family Kind are tapes we don’t want our friends to see lest they tease us and call us by that sacred family nickname which should remain a secret.
They’re like vintage fossils that remind us of our past and bring a warm glow of nostalgia. They take us back to how life with our family once was, how we used to be, and how our relationship with our siblings has changed over the years.
Around 80 percent of people in the world know the pains and tortures of having a sibling; hour long arguments, snide remarks, teasing nicknames that leave dents in your armour, and the imploring of The Parents to side with you and tear the other one down.
As the youngest, I know this well. My relationships with my three siblings - my two older sisters and the eldest, my brother - haven’t changed much over time.
They develop and morph into somewhat of an ‘adult’ one at times, but for the most part we are still children when we’re together. Our togetherness is generally brought on when we return to where I was born and where we grew up; the rather absurd terri- tory of Gibraltar. We return to the setting of the tapes and slip back into how we were as bratty little demons.
Now here we are in our latest family video. The Old Timer, 27, nervous and jiggling his left leg but logical and collected. This is Salvy, a reliable type who fidgets in front of the camera.
The Bossy Princess, Madi, at 23; who still has a temper that flares like a gasoline spill that goes unnoticed until all are caught helplessly in the raging flames. She frequently reaches up to tuck, smooth or readjust her bob of black hair, pulls faces, and flutters her eyelashes ‘endearingly’.
And Vi at 21, who sits Defiantly Braless and ‘‘in the middle of the middle’’, the supposed ‘ peacemaker’ as many studies claim. She’s taken to a bohemian look and wears loose, flowing clothes and headscarves. Yet however harmless she might appear, she too is capable of scalding insults.
Talk to your siblings and they won’t hold back. I think it’s perhaps the only relationship that allows for complete and brutal honesty.
When asked why the Princess is so bossy she says timidly, ‘‘sometimes I don’t want to do it, but it’s just what I do I guess’’.
Defiantly Braless’s eyes dart to the side, ‘‘we all get treated the same… to a degree’’, clearly feeling that the middle sibling is deprived.
The Old Timer remains docile and non-confrontational, saying ‘‘you’re alright, I guess’’ when asked what he thinks of his three dear little sisters.
The sibling relationship is a strange phenomenon. It’s difficult to explain because it’s something you have always taken for granted, like breathing, eating, the words that fall from your mouth. It doesn’t feel important until you really start to think about it. And once you do, you start to question everything. As the youngest am I set up to fail? Is my brother really going to succeed because he’s the eldest? Do I really have the lowest IQ because I have more older siblings?
Vi remarks that ‘‘my place in the family affected the way that I am’’. For better or worse, this is true.
Studies on the importance of sibling relationships and sibling dynamics state many contestable things. Each family is different, every sibling relationship will be different from the next.
Regardless of whether I did get the dregs of my parents’ DNA, I feel my relationship with my siblings is not something that can be described in so many words. It’s a relationship so closely intertwined with you and your history that it is, in a sense, you, like the strands of a double helix in DNA.
You and your siblings come from the same background resulting in a relationship that is totally unique. But, as with all things, this relationship can sometimes be more complicated or difficult than we would like.
Arguments or negotiations about who gets the orange iPod or the yellow iPod will invariably lead to grudges held by at least one of my siblings towards another. Teasing jokes can frequently be taken the wrong way and cause more pain than intended.
When all’s said and done, often the people we can talk to the easiest are our siblings; never mind the blow-dart insults aimed at your neck, never mind that you’re The Dregs, never mind that sometimes you’ll want to throw a chair against the wall as you squabble over what should be on the TV.
Your relationship with your siblings is one you can never replicate. However annoyed or angry with our siblings we might get, we will always be connected to them. After all,