I am 56 and have 2 living siblings....a brother 54 and a sister 51...I also had a brother that passed away about 10 years ago that was between my brother and sister.
We had a good relationship growing up for the most part. Me, being the oldest, was always accused of getting "the good stuff" by my siblings
My brothers and I grew up in the same drywall trade as well as my brother in law.....he has been in my life since I was 19.
Other than our brother that has passed we see each other often, usually at my house for BBQ's or family dinners....we call each other often and my brother and bil often work on the same job as me.
But we don't really do anything together outside of family get togethers....
we did all go camping a few weeks ago....we used to go to Dodger games together...but not so much as we got older.
We all have kids and my brother and I raised my younger brother's son (me) and daughter (him)...
We used to all go to church together but, although they do go from time to time, usually it's just Angie and I.
wow...we just had an earthquake....5.7....getting used to it
We all have different interests in "free time"....
Now my son and daughter do a lot of things together with their spouses. My son is 29 and my daughter will be 27 this month....
they go golfing....tennis...water sports....USC and Charger games....dinners downtown San Diego
my kids really enjoy each other's company...
I am very happy for that....
What about YOU and your siblings?...your kids and their siblings?
EZMONEY- how very blessed you are to be able to share your life with your siblings, and that your children enjoy each others company too! I am sorry about the loss of your brother however.
My story is sadly a lot different than yours: I have one brother, he is the oldest (7 years older than me)...In the beginning I looked up to him, but realized at a young age that I was more like the older sibling. When my brother was born he was deprived of oxygen, and as a result has some severe learning disabilities (he is not mentally ******ed, nor what I would call "slow"...but if I had to label, I'd go with slow). Because of my dad's actions, my brother was a violent and disturbed teen...he turned to drugs and alcohol at at early age (maybe about 12). Because of our family history, he was definitely an alcoholic by the age of 17. All I have known of my brother is him as a drunken, drugged up, or anxious because of withdrawal individual. I have witnessed him both being on the nod from heroin, and withdrawing from it...I have seen him relapse twice after getting clean in rehab. Now he is 28 years old, I am 21...We talk to each other sometimes, he talks to my mother more. I am mad at I am mad at him for stealing from our family, and putting us through all this...even though he supposedly is in recovery again. In the future, maybe after a couple years of him having a clean track record...I hope to have a good relationship with him.
As for children, I don't have any yet. Not sure if I ever will. But I'd hope that they get on easier than my brother an I.
Sorry that was a long, and sad story...but you asked...and it feels good to talk about it.
Although me and my brothers have a decent relationship, we don't really do stuff together. Now me and my younger brother USED to go to movies together, go to concerts together, go shopping together, etc...but now he's married to a lazy no-good witch complete w/ lazy no-good in-laws (her mom's been married 10 times...her brother and dad are constantly in and out of jail...she herself is on her 3rd marriage at 23, not including however long her lesbian phase lasted). Now he's letting that family control his life and constantly ignoring us. I'm at the point now where I have nothing for him and don't even want to hear from him. I'm just sick of it. It's unfortunate, but just the way things are right now.
I don't have or want kids, so I'll sit out the 2nd part of the question.
Families come in all sizes and shapes. I have no whole siblings but I have a half brother, we get along well. My father passed away when I was 17 months old, and I am plenty ticked off about that I feel cheated. Other kids get to have a Dad, why don't I ? My mother remarried when I was 8, I hated my stepfather (With good reason). I was 10 when my brother was born and 15 when my sister was born. So, you see I was the little princess for 10 years uintil my brother was born. My sister passed away at the age of 5, the same year I got married. There were only 5 years when there were three kids. After she passed my brother was the only one at home. I always say my mother had two "only children".
my brother an i are 8 years apart, i'm older. for quite some time my parents were too busy or wrapped up in their own lives and i was the little mommy to him. now that he's a grown up, he lives far away so we only get to chat online. the one cool thing we can do together still is play nintendo - which for us 80's-90's kids was a big deal! With the wii we both use wi-fi and we can play some games together. it's awesome.
but- since he's so far away that's it.
My family is dysfunctional to say the least, though I'm sure most are.
There are 4 kids, with an age range of 22-36.
Me and my sister (14 years older than me) get along great. She pretty much raised me as my mom and dad always had some meeting/activity to do, so her being prime babysitting age, taking care of me was her job. She only lives 10 minutes away from me, and we go to the gym together regularly, though lately her mother in law has been tagging along which makes me a little uncomfortable (she's not my mother in law, I shouldn't have to pretend to like her... though I do). I wish I was closer with my sister's two boys though, they're 6 and 7, so they want nothing to do with their aunt (though soon enough they'll realize I wont tell my sister everything and can drive them around and my phone will be ringing off the hook!)
My brothers are nothing like my sister and I, I don't want to say they're not motivated or wanting the right things, but they make very bad decisions. Both of them were **** raisers of teens, and my youngest older brother (2 years older) really screwed it up. He hurt me mentally, phyiscally and emotionally, even though we were realy close growing up. All I ever wanted to do was hang out with him, but soon enough he realized his friends thought he was cool if he pushed me around and picked on me. When I was 15 he had a girl move in with us, I don't know why my parents stood for it, but they did. She hid in his room and did cocaine. I hated her, with every fiber of my being, she was rude to me, my parents, stole, and used my stuff. She got clean and we started being.. dare I say friends. We'd go to the mall, hang out all the time, which brought me and my brother closer together. Then she got pregnant and it was all over again, my parents asked them to leave because they had taken care of her for 5 years without so much of a thank you, they werent about to do it for a baby too. They now have 2 children, and she just turned 22. Her mother also lives with them to "help" but all she does is have my brother support her, and her daughter, so they can both sit around the house and be "house wives". (The mother in law had the audacity to tell my mother that she, my brother, and her daughter were going to move into my parents home. My mother told her where she could shove it, and my brothers girlfriend said she'd never see her granddaughter again.) So it's rare I see them, my only niece is now over a year and I've only seen her three times, and their son I have only seen once. the day he was born.
My other brother (11 years older) also has not made good female decisions, he was married once and I loved her. I was 13 at the time, and she would take me for the weekend, do everything with me. But he went off to war, and came back a changed man and she couldn't take it anymore. Then he knocked up his roommate, which did bring about the most amazing little boy in the world, but they couldn't make it work. He now got remarried, and she had two children from a previous marriage. I just hope they make it work.
That's rough TORITO...my prayers are with you and your family!
My dad died at 54 as an alcoholic...my one brother, as mentioned, at 40 from a bad heart from meth (although he was off that for several years prior)...and my other brother has been sober for about 20 years....
all of this happening after I was 25, in fact my dad never really drank until I was a senior in high school...but it grew as years went on....my brothers didn't do drugs until their early 20's by then I was grown....
so thankful I didn't GROW UP with the issues...but...there were plenty after nonetheless!
I have only one sister who's 2 years younger and I love her dearly, but always feel put down by her. She was always the baby and princess of the family, cute, thin, and Mom's favorite (you could ask anyone this and they would agree). She didn't like our dad because of his alcoholism and once told me she wouldn't miss him when he died (I'm wondering now if that's true since he just died in March), but she didn't know how Mom treated me and that Dad only had stayed married to her to protect us from her problems (he knew that at that time he wouldn't have been awarded custody). Anyway, my sister is very judgmental and opinionated and it just grates on most of the family-her husband has the best job, her kids are the best kids, ours are terrible (according to her), her city's the best, her kids' school's the best, her church is the only right one,.....you get the idea. She was impossible when Dad became ill and ended up on life support, but it was mostly because she was working on an on-line class and, according to her, we all lived in a stupid, backwoods area with terrible internet and slow computers, so she couldn't do her classwork easily enough-never mind that her dad was DIEING! She was just so unbearable, we were all relieved when she left (a couple hours after dad died) and went back to her perfect city and internet and blah, blah, blah....
I do love her, but have to take her and her family in very small doses-I guess it's good that we live 6 hours apart.
Can we switch families? I lost my grandmother 2 yrs ago and my brother (who is 6yrs younger than i am) have been playing screw over the big sister. Needless to say since I have taken himn to court he wants nothing to do with me. Go figure sometimes family is our worst enemy and/ or our best friend.
I just got back from vacation to see the family. It was me, my husband, our three kids (ages 24, 22 and 19) and our oldest son's girlfriend on a 1000 mile trip by car to Nebraska. We visited both my siblings and my husbands siblings and we had a great time. My husbands family is super fun. Everybody gets together including spouses, kids and significant others that include three generations. We had bbqs, golf for the guys, lunch and shopping for the gals, pizza parties, fireworks and lots of beer. My own family is rather dull but we managed one bbq and a trip to a state park and no beer at all! We love getting together with my husbands family but I always keep in touch with my own siblings although they are pretty much sticks in the mud. My kids also get together quite a bit for different things. I cannot imagine they will not always be close.
I think I now know why my DD thinks that Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year. Gary, everything that you mentioned, we used to do when we lived in Utah. Now we're all scattered and don't get together much. But Mom called Sunday, essentially inviting themselves to our house for Thanksgiving (which I LOVE to host!) which means that either my brother (Utah) or sister (Texas) will have to bring them as they refuse to fly any more (Mom is in a wheelchair, etc., etc., etc.). I do hope that my sister can come. Right now she's got her DH's parents living with them as her MIL is suffering from dementia and FIL has other health problems. She needs a break and a long weekend should do it for her.
But I do miss the summer BBQ's with the family.
At least in the winter my in-laws spend about 7 or 8 months with us, so we get together with them at least once a week.
I have 2 sisters, but we live in different states. We get together on holidays and some weekends, but mostly stay in touch by phone and email. Life gets busy and sometimes weeks go by, but they're always in my thoughts and prayers, and I suppose we enjoy the time we do get to spend together even more because we don't take it for granted.
My kids also live far from each other. There's just 2 of them, not quite 2 years apart. When my daughter moved to Texas she put her younger brother on her cell phone plan to 'make sure he'd stay in touch'.
I have a younger brother. He lives in Canada where we were born. He and I were very close growing up. We were never competitive and got along most of the time, except normal sibling squabbling. We spent a great deal of time together and were very protective of each other. We kinda grew up fast at a young age. My parents are dysfunctional alcoholics and prescription drug abusers and my brother and I have done a good job not following in their path. Its pretty sad when you think one of your life's biggest accomplishments in not being an alcoholic! We have grown a bit apart since I we moved out. I got married and live in the U.S. while he moved across Canada. I adore my brother. I am very lucky.
I have no children and no interest in children. I think with my family's history of substance abuse and addiction as well as heath issues, I have no business thinking of having children. Its never been an interest of mine either, so I am completely fine with that decision.
I have a younger sister. She's 20 and in the Army. It looks like she will be getting deployed to Iraq at the end of the year, so I cherish the last few months we have together knowing she won't be in the states for Christmas. On the up side, we are currently in the same state -- Texas! She is around nine hours away from me, so we see each other when we can.
As you probably inferred, we are very close. We were not close as kids; I was the rebellious, dramatic one while she was the logical goody two-shoes. We always fought. Two years after I moved out of my parents' house, my sister called me, told me she read my MySpace page, and figured out everything I'd been doing. I didn't want her to know about the kind of life I led at the time, nor did I want my parents finding out. When she straight up told me, "I saw all your crazy party pictures, posts about doing drugs, and making out with strangers... and I want you to know I don't care what you do. It's your life and not really my business to mess with it."
I let my guard down after that and told her everything. That moment happened five years ago. I've cleaned up my life since then and my sister even looks up to me now. We've been SUPER close ever since. We know everything about each other and there is no B.S. in our relationship. It's awesome to have a sister who is also one of my best friends.
I don't have any kids... yet... I believe I DO want them one day, but after I'm married and more situated. I think about being a mom from time to time and it makes me happy... though that's also because I think about all the positive things motherhood provides
Take My Sibling....PLEEEZE!
