As fate would have it, I happened to be the oldest of my siblings, which somehow created more commitments with them. In my culture the older brother is like a second father, he has the duty and responsibility to take care of the younger ones.
However, in my case it was not exactly like that. When my second brother was born I was only about ten months old, so I don't remember anything about the moment of his birth. My most distant memories with him place me at about four years old, by that time I was a pretty sickly child so my mother took care of me to the extreme. On the other hand, my second brother seemed to be made of iron, he never got sick.
That difference between the two made it seem like he was the older one, he was always bigger and full of vitality. He took his strength seriously and was very attentive to me, taking care of me as much as he could.
When it came time for school he was my great ally. Even though I was in a higher grade he still protected me. The older boys didn't mess with me, they knew that my brother didn't have a very good character and that he didn't think twice about picking a fight. His protection stayed with me throughout elementary school.
At the end of elementary school I spent a few years away from home living with my paternal grandmother. At that time my third brother, whom I have seven years older, had already been born.
Every Friday my mother would come down to visit me from Caracas, where they lived, to La Guaira, where I lived with my grandmother. I would get together with my second brother and we would go to the beach. He was braver, so he would dive into the sea first and that's how he learned to swim. I was afraid of that immense sea but my brother encouraged me and with his help I soon learned to swim too. Just the two of us enjoyed that Guairean sea that always seemed to me bluer than the others.
That great union between us was present until our teenage years, from that moment on we separated.
At that time we both had many conflicts with my father and my brother decided to go live with an uncle. There he learned to work and soon after he moved to another city where he started his family. Nowadays we see each other occasionally and have little telephone contact. He is a man not given to the use of technology, he has no social network and actually enjoys very little conversations on the phone.
With the other siblings I remember very little. The third one was born when I was starting school, I hardly shared with him. I have a few fleeting images of my mother telling him to help her when she was bathing him or feeding him. I'm sure that more than once I held him in my arms giving him the bottle while my mother was doing things in the kitchen, but I don't really remember a lot of things. He on the other hand has many memories of me. Sometimes when we talk he tells me things that are totally new to me, thanks to him I have learned a lot about my other younger brother's life.
When my last maternal brother was born I was fifteen years old, I was finishing high school and about to begin my university studies. I remember him a little more when he was little. My mother used to let me take care of him for a long time. I remember that he liked very much that I would throw him a ball to fetch it; he also liked that I would give him some of my school notebooks to doodle with the colors.
When I graduated as a teacher he was only five years old. I moved to another city and saw him very little. Then we met again when he was in his teens, at which time my mother moved a few years to the city where I lived. He now lives with his wife in the upper part of a house he shares with my mother. The two of us communicate frequently and have very good relations.
Apart from those three, I have two paternal siblings who were born when I already had my children. There is a female who is my only sister, my oldest son's age. The male is my second son's age. My children always found it very funny that these uncles were the same age as them. As kids they couldn't understand how that was possible.
I had very little relationship with those siblings, I mostly helped them in economic matters. At Christmas time I would buy presents for them and for my children. When it was time for school I would bring them what they needed to study.
Now that they are adults, they are always looking out for me. The boy lives in the same city as me and occasionally we see each other to share with his children. The two children love me very much and in a way they have been taking the place of my granddaughters, with whom I am separated by distance.
To have known all these siblings has been one of the great blessings that life has given me. I really feel very grateful that all of them are part of the story of my life.
I am publishing this post motivated by the initiative proposed by my friend @ericvancewalton, Memoir Monday, in its nineteenth week. For more information click on the link.
Thanks for your time.
Images edited in Canva and Photoshop.
Logo creado por @themanualbot
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