Yes. I remember one time when I was very little, maybe 5 or 6. My parents were divorced by this time and I was living w/ my mother and little brother in the top floor of a split-level duplex. During the holidays my mother used to hang all the cards we received from family& friends on the wall of the enclosed staircase leading up to our apt.. One day I asked my mother if I could help her hang the cards and she said yes, but only if I’d be very careful as this meant I would have to stand on the hand-rail going up the staircase and balance myself while I hung the cards (I was, after all, still a little fella myself). I told her I would be careful and ran off hurriedly, excited to be able to do a “grown-up” chore. Naturally my little brother, who was 2 or 3 at the time, came padding along after me, excited to watch big brother.
I remember everything so clearly from that moment: balancing on the hand rail, taping up card after card, talking w/ my brother who sat quietly watching me. I remember feeling very warm & happy. I even remember that the stairwell was filled w/ warm light as the shone through the windows on a cold but sunny Ohio winter afternoon, melting the icicles that hung from the windowsill outside. But what I remember most of all is my little brother sitting there, watching in a way that only small children can, when they have that look of complete love and adoration on their face. Do you know the look I’m talking about? I really only started to become aware of this look many years later when I began to hang out with my god-son a lot. Beginning at a very young age, children get this look, this look of complete love & trust & innocence & reverence and wonder on their faces when they watch their parents, or siblings, or even the older kids on the playground, doing something. I don’t really know how to explain this look, but if you’ve spent any time around children, and you’ve attained a certain level of emotional maturity, I think you know this look I’m talking about. It’s almost heartbreaking when you see it and you just want to sweep the child up and make sure nothing & no one ever hurts them. Well, now when I look back I recognize that it was this look my brother was giving me, and in fact gave my quite often as I was his older brother, but of course at the time I didn’t have the emotional complexity to recognize it.
So, as my brother sat there watching me, and we talked and shared this moment, I inevitably became a little careless, and soon lost my balance, fell off the hand-rail, down to the stairs and then went tumbling down the stairwell. I remember the horrified look on my brother’s face—he even had jumped up and tried to hold me on the hand-rail when he saw me beginning to lose my balance, but of course he was too small. So I went tumbling down the stairs,, bumpity-bump. When I finally came to a stop, I began to cry, but mostly out of fright, I wasn’t hurt seriously. I remember my brother standing there, terrified. My mother, of course, had heard all the commotion and was on the scene almost immediately. When she came running down the stairs shouting “Are you okay?? What happened??” a feeling of deep embarrassment and shame came over me for not being able to take care of myself as I had promised. She ran down the stairs to me and made sure I was OK, and then, without even thinking of it, without having any idea why, I pointed at my brother and said: “He pushed me!” Instantly my mother swooped him up by one arm and began paddling him the whole way up the stairs while my brother cried out “No I didn’t, no I didn’t!!” The instant I said it I knew it was wrong and wanted to take it back. I remember the look of complete confusion on my little brother’s face when I blamed him. And I can still picture him being dragged up the stairs, trying to protect his little butt w/ his one free hand (my mother rarely spanked us, and certainly never beat us, but I think sometimes raising two boys alone, working as a waitress & going to nursing school nights just brought her to her wits end—I also feel guilty about not being able to recognize this at a younger age, but that’s another story). And I can still hear him crying out.
This memory, of him watching me w/ that special look on his face, and talking to him and sharing this moment w/ him, and then me betraying him out of pride or shame or whatever you want to call it, and the look of utter hurt & confusion on his face, and the vivid memory of him being spanked b/c of me, to this very day it crushes my heart—even now, as I type this, I feel awful shame, and feel so bad for my little brother, almost to the point of tears, and I want to pick him up, as he was then, and tell him I’m sorry and I love him and I didn’t mean it, and I want to be able to go back and try to explain to myself, my young self, that I really should treat my brother better, and take care of him, and my mother better.
Just a few momments later, while my mother was still in our bedroom scolding my brother, I was able to pull myself together, pick myself up, dust myself off and walk, whimpering, up the stairs. When I finally got to the bedroom, my mother was just coming out the door and I could hear my brother crying inside. When she saw me she asked if I was OK and I said yes, but then began to cry even harder. I remember she hugged me and said “What’s wrong?” and it was then that I told her: “I lied. Matt didn’t push me, I fell.” And she said “What?? Are you serious? But I just spanked him!” and then I remember the look coming over her face—the look of guilt & anguish for having wrongly punished my one of her children. She asked me why I did it and I said I didn’t know and began crying even more. Then I said I was sorry and told her “you can spank me now, too, if you want to” And I remember the look on her face, the absolute look of pity & sorrow, as she said “No, Trev, I don’t want to spank you” and hugged me while I cried some more.
I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, but I’m pretty sure I had to go in to our bedroom & apologize to my brother. But whatever it was, it was not enough, b/c that memory still tears me up to this day, and if I ever have children of my own one day, as I hope to, this is one of the things I’m really gonna try to instill upon them—the love & reverence for their siblings.
(and yes, I’ve apologized to my brother since then. My brother, of course, says he doesn’t remember it, but this does nothing for my feelings of guilt…)
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