Are Things Going Well? An Early Day in the Life of a Firstborn Daughter

We had all four windows rolled down in the green tank-like Ford thanks to the summer Florida sun intent on baking us inside. Hot humid air swooshed into the car. Mom steered around the curvy stretch of road towards home as fast as she dared as my sister and two brothers talked and fussed and bickered in that talk-over-each-other way that kids do. And then laughed and squealed as all three slid along the back bench seat when the car rounded the bends.

On the passenger side of the front bench, I rocked and jiggled and shushed my angrily squirming, wailing brother. At four moths old he was quickly learning how to be heard in a large family. He nuzzled into my neck and sucked on my jaw, looking for lunch. Nothing soothed him, not even the trick of placing my knuckle in his mouth as pacifier. He wanted milk and he wanted it now. That was something only Mom could provide.

Mom pulled into the driveway, and I handed her the baby which she deftly latched to her breast. Ahh. Silence. Then we all tumbled from the oven-like car. I gathered the groceries, corralling the two boys, 6 and 4, to help carry small things – the toilet paper, the jug of milk – and toted bags inside. All while shepherding my 2 year old sister into the house. Mom collapsed into the padded living room rocker where she had nursed every single one of “the kids.” And where she would continue on, nursing baby number 6, just two years down the road.

With practiced efficiency, I put away groceries and worked to keep the three older ones from getting too loud or rambunctious. They were hungry, too, they just didn’t wail like infants. Instead they rough-housed and bickered. I’d already learned that there was no time to waste around hungry kids. The best defense was food. And fast. I’d also recently learned that technically, at 14, I was old enough to have a baby myself (I had been impressed by this fact after seeing Romeo and Juliet). Despite an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and a parental near worship of childbearing, I was too focused on the day to day demands of my family of origin to have any thought about having a different family of my own someday. With firstborn focus, I pulled two generic mac-n-cheese boxes from the bags and started lunch.

Even though I was the acting “little mother,” I didn’t want to be mom. What I wanted was for everyone to “be good.” To be quiet and happy and place few to no demands on Mom. I wanted this because Mom was obviously stressed and overwhelmed. Mom and Dad were happier when the kids were quiet, calm, obedient. It was my compulsory duty to keep them this way. Not because I wanted this duty. Oh no. This duty was imposed on me. I chafed at the mantle of responsibility that had been swaddled on me like an oversize robe. As if afflicted with a chronic tic, I was constantly canvassing the family to judge, are things going well?

My wants or preferences didn’t even enter the picture. They were conscripted by my parents’ wants. I emerged into self-awareness already responsible for what other people wanted. Little wonder I have a hard time knowing what I really want, not what other people tell me to want. Or what other people want that seems in my power to give. It’s taken me decades to realize that my confusion about my own wants is rooted in my earliest experience. And is possibly partially a byproduct of birth order.

As the oldest and firstborn of six, I was always put in charge. I was an only child for nearly eight years. After brother number 1 was born, a march of four more siblings every two years paraded into my once very small family. You don’t need a birth order expert to realize what a shock that can be. But something more than birth order was at play. By age 10, I was often in charge while my parents were home but busy in another part of the house. By 12, babysitting evenings and weekends was my life. By 16, I had four brothers and one sister. And we were fully entrenched in very specific narrow roles.

I loved them fiercely and still do. I wonder if I ever learned how to show that love. Or if it was smothered by the robe of hand-me-down authority. I expressed love by walking them up and down hallways, or rocking them in chairs, or fixing them boxes of mac n cheese, or playing cars or Legos or airplanes, or chauffeuring them all to playgrounds in the current hand-me-down family car. Now in our thirties, forties, and fifties, we’ve aged out of those activities and a small voice inside tells me we are sadly disconnected, torn apart by the consequences of my leadership position and the subsequent child-like obedience, forever frozen in birth order limbo.

Because as I’m learning through the books I review, being a firstborn forms certain personality traits. Being an only, abandoned, neglected, child-of-divorce can create certain other personality traits as well. All me. Some of these traits are weaknesses like feeling not good enough, a rigid adherence to rules, and an inability to know what one feels. Or wants.

But some of these personality traits are strengths. Like being able to take charge in situations, being an active organizer, dutiful, and doggedly persistent. Instead of resenting my childhood I wonder if I can find and maybe even embrace the gifts. Instead of staying stuck in the holding pattern of oldest sister corralling siblings I wonder if I can take charge of myself and doggedly pursue meaningful connections with them instead.

On that hot day in 1981, we all made it home, everyone was fed, everything calmed down. For the moment, there was peace and everyone was “good” and the overwhelm subsided (briefly). My teenage self thought that these flashes of harmony should last much longer. Like days and weeks. (Months would be really nice.) My adult self has continued to wish for and work towards the same unrealistic never-ending calm and peace and contentment in the people around me.

As day eased into night and play took on a desperate stay-awake tone, it was time to get everyone ready for bed. And what child ever welcomes bedtime? The earlier short-lived peace and goodness I wanted faded away. The struggles and resistance to being told what to do by an older sister erupted again. Clashing wants superseded filial connection.

And in on-going unquestioning service to my family, I resolutely returned to the ring, already learning to gird my loins, adjust the mantle, and soldier on.

Car by Free-Photos from Pixabay / filtered from original
Robe by StockSnap from Pixabay / filtered from original
Pacifier by Uwe Baumann from Pixabay / filtered from original
Girl in cape by StockSnap from Pixabay / filtered from original