I have never though of myself as naive, but I really did think that things would be different for me. My children, my darling, sweet angels, would be best friends from the get-go, loving and considerate of each other, inseparable and completely compatible.
Then I woke up.
Well, actually, I was jarred awake from my dream by the hard fist of reality. My kids may grow up to be best friends, loving and considerate and all that stuff, but I don't think that's going to happen for some time. Maybe not even during my lifetime.
Oh, sure, they can get along. The girls play together, and they band together when the need arises, like when their mother is so stressed out that she is ranting and raving and totally unreasonable. Most mornings, though, start with an aggression -- usually imagined -- upon the 3-year-old by the 6-year-old. Maybe it's a dirty look or an ignored question. Maybe it's the use of the wrong tone of voice. Whatever it is, it comes by 8am every day, and it make the younger one shriek.
And boy, can she shriek.
Until the oldest is shuffled off to school, they will go at it, over everything from the older one correcting the younger one's grammar to the the younger one telling the older one that -- Gasp! -- her hair isn't long. Then for sever hours there is peace.
After school there are a few pleasantries and 42 seconds or so of that happy family time I dreamed about so long ago. Then they gear up for an afternoon of nit-picking, insulting and making faces at each other. Even the baby, when he is not off on a suicide mission or swimming in the dog water, interjects himself into the fray. What they have, he wants. And they know that once he gets it, it is as good as destroyed.
I tell them, "When all your friends are gone, you'll still have your sister" and, "Your sister and your brother will always be your best friends."
They stop bickering long enough to shoot me a dirty look. It does my heart good to see them work together like that.
I must say that, unlike my own sibling relationship, no one has yet lost any teeth or received any scarring from my childre's battles.
Now, we won't go into who actually knocked out whose teeth or cut whose face with a razor blade when my brother and I were kids, because that's all in the past and I'm sure my brother barely remembers those incidents or who did what to whom and completely agrees with me that bringing up stuff like that doesn't do anyone any good.
So, no bloodshed so far. Of course, they are still young. We haven't gotten to the I-never-said-you-could-borrow-my-sweater-and-now-look-at-it-it's-ruined stage yet, or the Hey-how-come-she-gets-to-say up/go out/sit there/use the phone-you-like-her-best stuff, but I'm sure it's coming.
I'm not naive anymore. Instead of trying to reason with them, or get to the root of what is bothering them, I'll just leave the room. Leave the house, if I have to.
As long as they reach adulthood with their original teeth, I'll be satisfied. And if their scars don't show, well, I'll be downright happy.
Little things mean a lot to us realists.