Doodaddy

Busy Mom had an interesting post today about being an only child. Turns out she might be spoiled (no!), but that’s not the point. More interesting is that she says that sibling-less-ness never “disrupted [her] psyche”; you can’t want what you don’t have.

As you’ve heard (in way too much yucky detail for Mike…), Working Mom and I are trying to order up a sibling for Boobaby. You could accuse us of copy-cat-ism, since we have a brother each and some stepsiblings, too. Then again, we’ve also got a history of divorce and alcoholism in our families, and we’re sure not trying to copy those.

So what if I had a brother, anyway. I still wanted a sibling. Just a different one.

I imagined that my friends were my brothers. I wanted to perform a blood-brother ceremony just like the one that, believe it or not, I’d read about in a children’s book. (Something from The Great Brain series, I think.)

And then, starting in my early teens, I stopped wishing I had a different brother. I started wanting a sister.

In my adult life (including now), I’ve had three best friends apart from my wife. All three were women, and it’s not too much of a stretch to say that, in them, I was seeking a sister, a sibling…

Drawing Lessons, by Tracy Mack. Worth checking out…

I’m reading a book called Drawing Lessons right now (I read kids books, remember?), and there’s this great line about best friends…

“You said best friends talk to each other when something’s wrong; that’s part of what makes them best.”

That’s a crystalline description of the sibling I’ve always wanted, and the sibling I’d like for Boobaby. I should have realized, though, that a sister or brother who shares a bunch of your genes won’t necessarily become that best friend with whom you would share your jeans. I hope you’ll forgive me repeating this old saw, but we’re not necessarily born together with all the members of our true family.

So, if we get a bio-sibling for Boo, we’ll be ecstatically happy. But if not, well, that’ll be all right, too. Either way, she’ll assemble her family around her just as we have done as her parents: by being as truly herself as possible, she’ll attract her own set of sisters and brothers… not to mention crazy uncles and weird second cousins.