It swells my heart to look on as two of my sons can’t be broken from a bear hug. Witnessing this affectionate moment between my youngest son, who still lives at home, and one of his older brothers, who just stepped in the house after completing his first year of university more than 1,000 kilometres away, I feel a rush of tenderness for them. After parenting through years of sibling friction, I had hoped that it would come to an embrace.
I know from living it that sharing space with a sibling can be both torturous and tender. Every morning for 16 years, I would wake, look to my right and see my sister. We shared a room from the time she was born, two-and-a-half years after me, until one September day when I moved to a university residence.
In our early years, we could stand, each on our own bed, and take an easy step onto the other’s bed without putting a foot on the ground. We’d cross the tiny canyon often to lie together on one bed, pretending the flowers covering the vanilla wallpaper were candies to be plucked and eaten. Later, we moved to a larger house where we scored the master bedroom. We had our own en-suite bathroom, a closet that spanned the breadth of the room, a wide seat with a plump cushion set in a dormer window, and a small, unfinished attic space under the slanted roof.
Our differences made us compatible for many years. From her perspective, I likely resembled a houseplant. I’d lay, inert, reading book after book. She’d play detective, catching phantom criminals lurking in the hideaway under the roof.
This easy camaraderie changed as we grew into moody adolescents. Tape lines were stuck on the carpet to define personal space. She would hide my hairdryer. I would feign nonchalant superiority by tying a bandana around my head, all the while secretly seething. In those teenage years, our differences were manifested in ridiculous tantrums, hair-pulling and object-throwing.
The years of teen combat mellowed when I left for university. My sister describes her first night without me as devastatingly lonely. I invited her to sleep over. Within a few summers we chose to live together in a converted commercial van as we travelled the small lakeside towns of Ontario as sailing instructors. We shared a space smaller than the bathroom into which, just a few years earlier, one of us would hole-up to torment the other.
The time came when we grew out of our family home permanently. I became a mother. My husband and I had three boys crammed into a bedroom so small it fit only bunk beds and a junior bed for the youngest. They managed well by spending time outside. We hoped to give them more space in their teen years.
Soon we built a new home on our existing Oakville, Ont., property, swelling from 900 to 1,200 square feet. We wanted a room for each son, but it was more difficult than we imagined. While the house was still in the design phase, we struggled to ensure that no son had a room better than those of the other two. Our property was tiny, but it was on the lake. We felt they all needed a comparable vista. A Rubik’s Cube would have been an easier puzzle to solve than configuring their three rooms to enjoy lake breezes. Given the lot dimensions and local bylaws, it became clear that one boy would not be looking at the lake.
Moving lines around architectural plans, trying to create space out of no space, we realized that the out-of-the-box solution meant keeping them in the box – sharing one room. It felt like a radical suggestion, so we designed a loft where they could build forts. We built three closets that could be individualized by paint colour and shelving options.
Our proposal was accepted. The boys moved into the bedroom when they were 4, 9 and 11. Every night I would go in to ask them to put books away and turn lights off. I would hear them talk and laugh in the dark. Every so often there were cross and cruel words.
Over time, the youngest commandeered the loft. A neatnik Felix to two Oscars, mess littered the main bedroom space, while tranquillity reigned supreme in a tiny space up a ladder. I never saw tape on the floor and there were no hair appliances to be stolen, but I’m sure they dealt with specifically male manifestations of viciousness to which I was not privy. When the eldest moved out in Grade 12 to spend a year on exchange, his plane was still over Canadian airspace as his bed was dismantled, stored in the basement and replaced with a bean bag chair and a television.
Today, it has not gone unnoticed that the two boys who have left for university are separated by a continent – one in Halifax and the other in Vancouver. I know they stay in touch on Facebook, where exchanges rarely take a turn for the ugly but hugs are impossible.
Maybe the experience has shaped their brains and their guts in the way I feel moments with my sister shaped mine. While there are many influences on our psyche, I like to think the profound intimacy of sharing bedroom space in our formative years instills helpful attributes such as patience and tolerance. If nothing else, the richness of the human connection paints the canvas of childhood memory with both dark and bright colours, shadows and light. It’s a good beginning.
Lee Scott lives in Toronto.
