From a very young age I became aware of how very different our family was to other’s.

In terms of size, we were about the same: three kids plus two parents. The oldest child was a boy, something that should have pleased our dad. Then eighteen months later, along came me, then seven years later, my younger sister.

The gap between my brother and I seemed “normal” as many of my cousins had been born one right after the other. But the seven-year difference between myself and my sister felt weird. By that time, I was somewhat aware of how babies were created, so to think of my parents doing something creeped me out. Especially after one time opening their bedroom door without knocking and seeing my dad’s naked butt moving on top of my mom, I began putting things together. But not really.

My cousins’ parents didn’t always get along, so the yelling and cursing and throwing of things wasn’t all that unusual. However, their house’s always felt more peaceful, more relaxed than mine.

My mom had all kinds of rules that didn’t make sense to me. We weren’t allowed to close our bedroom doors, for example: until my brother began hurting me, and then my mother found him doing so many years later. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. He never hurt me sexually, but brutally, enacting what he called giant squeezes on my upper arm until they were covered with bruises or kicking me in the abdomen whenever he thought no one was looking.

In a way I understood his violence because our father was violent. I never saw him hurt my mom, but he did hurt my bother and I (never our younger sister).

My mom clearly played favorites, up until the day she lost the ability to speak, which was when her mind failed.

She protected my brother from my dad, hiding any graded papers with less than stellar marks, calling my brother inside whenever my dad got a little too loud in his condemnations. She hovered over my sister, surrounding her in a shield-like protective vise, afraid that if someone, notably me, upset her, that my sister would have another petit-mal seizure. (Those stopped around age nine, just like the doctor had predicted, but it didn’t remove the shield).

Mom wouldn’t let us enter other kids’ houses and refused entry to those very same kids. On her good days, we were allowed to play with them outside, but as soon as they wanted to go inside, we had to return home. This lasted until I went away to college.

The one aspect of her parenting that I understood, in some deep-seated way, was her ability to divide us against each other.

My brother was smarter than me. True, but she didn’t have to remind me. My sister was the smartest of us all. Also true, but considering how she was allowed to waste all that brilliance when my brother and I were punished, severely, if our grades didn’t meet mom’s expectations, hurt.

My brother and I played high school sports. I, as short as I am, was on the basketball team and for a brief time, on softball as well. I was great at stealing the basketball from rival teams, but was too short to score baskets. Softball scared me. It was much bigger than a hardball, which I could throw and catch and hit with ease.

When I stood at the plate, with a confident air, I expected to send the softball well into the outfield, but time after time, it never made it even to second base. I quit when I realized I’d never make the team.

My dad had taught my brother and I to bowl when we each turned twelve. By the time we were in high school, we were quite good. Both of us tried out for and made it on the same bowling team. We played against all the high schools in our area, and generally won, depending upon how well our other two teammates did.

My sister joined her elementary track team, for one season. I attended one of her meets, in an attempt to show interest. She did pretty well. She didn’t come in first, but she was always near the top.

One thing that was the same for all three of us: our parents never came to see any of us play.

Later on, when my brother and I both had kids, my parents went to see my brother’s girls swim for their respective teams, then would brag about how well they did.

My kids swam, played baseball, soccer and softball. We lived just a few miles away from my parents, yet they couldn’t be bothered to support our kids. (My brother, for a time, lived in southern California, then moved out to San Ramon.)

One year, when it was time to return to college, my brother had bought an old convertible which he intended to drive to Los Angeles. My dad felt my brother needed his support, so took turns driving. That was the only time one of our parents visited our college, not even for graduation. (One reason, among many, why I didn’t attend the ceremony, something I still regret many years later.)

It was once grandchildren arrived that my mom resumed her Great Divider role.

My brother’s daughters were smarter, more talented, better all around, than my kids. His potty-trained faster, walked earlier, talked in complete sentences sooner, and so on. Everything they did was bigger and better.

My sister never had any kids, but her dogs were cuter, better trained, sweeter, than any of our dogs.

My brother’s many houses were in better neighborhoods than ours. True, if better meant more hoity-toity than ours. They only lived in upscale neighborhoods, on hills in reclusive areas, while we live in the flatlands.

My brother’s furniture was better than ours. Also true, for we couldn’t afford brand new. Instead, we bought slightly used or relied on hand-me-downs.

 My sister-in-law was a better decorator. True. I had no sense of style and no money to coordinate colors and designs.

My sister, now, there was the decorator in the family! When you have neo kids, you can furnish your house with white everything complimented by off-white others.

When I was ushering kids off to school or sports or events, my sister was gardening. She even spent time chasing spiders back into her neighbor’s yards. When caught, she condemned the neighbor for secretly planting spiders on her side of the fence. (My mom believed my sister!)

My sister was the better cook, serving fancy things she’d learned from cookbooks. That’s true. I relied on the Campbell’s cookbook, in which all recipes were made from….Campbell’s soup! Basic, but edible.

My brother could BBQ better than my husband. I beg to differ on that one, for my husband is a darn good cook.

These comparisons made me dread seeing my siblings. I didn’t truly believe they were better in all ways, than I was, but deep in my soul, a part of me thought there might be a smidgin of truth. That they were, truly better than I in all the various ways in which we had been compared.

It made the requisite family gatherings painful. Because of my mom’s watchful eyes, I never got to truly know my nieces. Not when they were young, and still not today when they are in their forties.

I don’t really know my sister’s husband. The few times we were together, he seemed like a really good guy. He’s patient and forgiving. He stayed with my sister through drug and alcohol addiction and is supporting her obsession with cross training. He seems like the kind of person I’d like to know.

As my mom’s mind began to fail, she wrote things down. When I called and how long we talked. What we talked about. What I served when they came for dinner. How long they were in our house.

She never asked how our kids were doing, never attended a wedding, never gave gifts to them and never called them.

She attended all three of my brother’s daughter’s weddings, gave them gifts and called them regularly.

My sister was married three times. My mom attended all three.

When I spoke with my mom, she only spoke about my siblings. She didn’t want to hear what I was doing, what my kids were doing, what my husband was doing. I once tried telling her about what it was like to finally become a teacher, and she didn’t want to hear about it.

She told me all about my sibling’s different jobs, in great detail.

When my mom passed away, if felt as if the anchor had been removed from around my neck. I no longer had to hear about my inferiorities, my failures as wife and mother, my inability to decorate properly (when my mom was dirt poor most of her life, she learned “decorating” from women’s magazines.)

I no longer dreaded the ringing of the phone or the unexpected opening of the kitchen door.

My dad lived several years more. He married within two years of my mother’s passing to a sweet, caring woman. She was easy to be with. As an excellent listener, she was eager to hear about my family. She wasn’t a very good cook, so she loved coming to our house. She never criticized the food I put on the table.

In many ways, she was more of a mother to me than my real mom ever was.

When my dad died, all hell broke loose.

I never knew how much my siblings disliked my dad’s wife. It was way beyond dislike. They hated her, believed she had married my dad for his wealth (which was a joke as my dad only had the “mobile” home in which they lived and an old truck.)

My phone rang constantly, mostly my sister, condemning me for loving my dad’s wife. It was as if my mother had been resurrected, now in the body of my sister. All the old hates and envies and jealousies sprang forth anew, but more cutting, more vicious, more targeted toward me.

It reached a point when I refused to answer the phone.

Now the caller pops up on our television and on our phones.  If my sister’s number appeared, I wouldn’t answer.

She did post something on my daughter’s Fb, all cheery and wanting to reconnect. I disregarded the request.

My brother had gone out of his way to mend broken fences. He calls regularly. He’s been sharing photos of the ghetto in which we first lived and the houses we subsequently moved into.

He asks questions about my family and my health.

While he shares little, very private, like our mom had been, just hearing the tone of his voice feels good.

I’ve begun reminding him of things we did in our younger years. What seemed hurtful then, is now something we can chuckle over.

The Great Divider had been gone a good, long time, but the effects of her manipulations carry on.