When your siblings are ten, fifteen, or more years older (or younger) than you, it’s an entirely different experience
Estie’s mother was 45 was she was born, which wasn’t so common at the time. Growing up, her parents were the same age as her friends’ grandparents. “Sometimes I just felt awkward,” admits Estie. “It was embarrassing for me that my mother would be wearing these random shoes and everyone else’s mothers seemed more stylish. She dressed like she was a fifty-year-old lady and my friend’s mothers were thirty-five. My mother wasn’t concerned with being stylish or cool or whatever. She was past that. She just wanted to be comfortable!”
Estie adds, “To my advantage, I had a lot of nice experiences with my parents that other friends of mine didn’t have. I remember my mother playing games with me on Shabbos. That’s what you’ve got to do with the youngest kid, you’ve got to play the games with them, you know. There’s no sibling to tell them to go play with. She may have wanted to sit and read a magazine, but I got to play Uno and cards with her because it was just me.”
“On the other hand, when you did interact with us siblings that had kids, you had the other end of it. You were like the older sibling,” says Jonathan. “So you had both. I think having you kept our parents young.”
Growing up at different times, in essentially different households and always being at different life stages could make it challenging to forge a close relationship. Once everyone is an adult, is the baby still the baby?
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