When it takes a snowy donnybrook to learn valuable lessons…

We’re bound to bump into one another…

As six kids growing up together in a four bedroom house there was a lot of “interaction” amongst siblings, some of it good, some of it bad, and all of it growth generating. I was the youngest of the tribe, and by a fair margin, my next oldest sibling was my older brother, who is six years older than me, ranging to my oldest brother who was fourteen years older than me. This means that there was a small window of time in which we were all housed in the same domicile. I have limited memories of that time, but I do strongly recall that once a year, at least it seems to me that it was an annual event though it literally may have only happened once ever, there would be a massive snow ball fight that would break out in our front yard. 

…especially while hurling balls of snow at each other…

The snowball fight would be intense and while it had a “playing field” it would sort of spill all over the real estate in front of our house, in our front yard, on the tree lawn, a little bit on the neighbors yard, in the driveway, etc. Being six of us, even though I don’t think every sibling participated throughout, but sometimes I think maybe some neighbor kids or friends would cycle in and out of the, seemingly, all day battle, you could easily lose track of one or two kids which would result in some excellent blind sides and ambushes.

There weren’t really “sides” in the battle which created scenarios of snow balls coming from numerous places with little cover other than a few trees, bushes, cars (one particular blue van) and an occasional snow wall. I feel like this thing went on for days, when in actuality it may have lasted 30 minutes or less. I think a key strategy in the fight was to not go against my oldest brother and, if you could pull it off, possibly team up with him. Being the youngest and the least effective in these battles I was able to fairly regularly team up with him. This team up consisted of my brother being very elusive to the snowballs coming at us and also making and dispensing snowball rockets like a crazy gymnast (this analogy is appropriate because my brother was a crazy gymnast) while I hid behind him and tried to keep my winter Cleveland Browns hat, fully stocked with a ball on top (why in the hell is that ball even on hats, does that thing serve a purpose of any kind????), out of my eyes.

…and also f&$k mittens am I right…

Plus mittens are an absolute pain in the ass am I right? I mean what could I possibly effectively do to help us win the war with mittens on? Even the word mittens calls to mind some sort of candy ass and does not strike fear into the hearts and minds of anyone. It rhymes with kittens for shit’s sake. These things are designed solely to keep kids fingers warm enough to not fall off because children literally aren’t coordinate enough to get each finger separately into the fingers of a glove. The day a kid can get every finger into his or her glove should be a milestone event day, like a first communion, or bar(t) mitzvah, or some other religions sign of coming into one’s own, a moving on from childhood type event, Glove Day. Also, I may not have had mittens on during any of these snowy donny brooks, but if I did they definitely had a negative impact.

…and the epic battle wears on…

Anyhow, the rumble would wage on in our front yard and spectators would begin to gather, and by spectators I think I recall my Mom watching and thinking we were crazy. It was quite a ruckus though, imagine a postage stamp sized front yard and 5-8 kids running around pelting snowballs at each other on a street where the houses were relatively close together and the neighborhood was fairly tightly knit, as they would be in those days. I think the spectacle of it is what led my Mom to take pictures of the battle waging on. When we were done the front yard would literally look like a battle ground, snow would be trampled and displaced from gathering to create projectiles.

I think I do recall at least once that a snow wall, which had been created slightly before the start of the fracas, was involved. It would take damage and resembled a miniature replica of a blasted and crumbling building from World War II. It was built next to That Tree.

Funny thing is, and I find myself thinking this a lot while I’m looking back on these moments, I don’t really visually recall much of the snowball fight. I recall a lot of the feelings I had at the time, but it’s similar to when most people look back on pictures of times past and I find myself saying things like, “That’s me?” Even though I don’t remember all of that detailed imagery there is that firework moment that is resident in my brain that took me back there. The thing that took place that, due to whatever the perfect alignment of human chemicals and feelings, decided to just stick. During one particular battle my youngest older sister went down with an injury, I think she slipped awkwardly or something. An unspoken truce was immediately called and everyone laid down their frosty balls for a moment (yes, you’re correct I just wanted to say frosty balls). I remember a small huddle had formed around her. Well, as I explained above, I was a little guy and really almost meaningless in the grand scheme of the battle of snow that was waging on. However, I found this moment allowed me to make a big impact. As a result I walked up through an opening in the small huddle and then threw snow right in my sister’s face.

What a dickhead.

I was rotten, I get it, but truly it was kind of like that moment when they let little kids play games on professional sport fields or courts. I finally had my shot, and I took it…and my oldest brother immediately let me have it. I remember his reaction was along the lines of, “What the hell are you doing?!?!?!” I don’t recall it being specifically mean or aggressive, it wasn’t like he was angry or beating me up or anything, and he was kind of laughing, but also not laughing, and sort of teaching me all in one fell swoop that this was dirty poker, unsportsmanlike conduct, below the belt, not cool. I recall that he did this by picking me up and dumping me on the ground, again not violently or in a way to hurt me, but in a playful way in which to convey the message. Playful in a way that you would think a whale would play with a puppy to get a point across.

I too recall that I wasn’t being mean spirited or have evil intentions in my effort to get a shot in…to my fallen sister’s face. Also to clarify, she wasn’t like ambulance hurt when she first went down, but just had the wind knocked out of her or something. She kind of even laughed a bit when I did it, and said something like, gee thanks.

…ending in the lessons only brothers and sisters could give.

That’s the thing that sticks, and I suppose like many of these memories, what surfaces is just how much we learn from each other as siblings, even when lessons or teaching is not even taking place. Also, and this is the part that came up and got me while I am currently writing this (by got me I mean caused me to cry, I cry easily), as I casually noted at the start and more powerfully realize now, there was not a wide window of time in which all six of us lived together in that house and while there is so much I miss about it I really just have to be glad that we had that snowball fight, or those dinners when we were all at the table, or Christmas morning with all six of us stacked on the steps. I could walk into one of a number of small rooms in our house and encounter a new thing, a different perspective, and I suppose a lot of these memories will capture just that.

As it pertains to me chucking a whole bunch of snow in my sister’s face, it was an ass monkey of a move, but had I not done it I’m not sure the lesson of winning fairly and sportsmanlike conduct would’ve stuck, and I’m also fairly certain I would remember even less, if anything at all about those snowball fights.

These days I watch my kids play outside together or listen to them playing in another room and I see or hear things getting a little out of hand, or one of them sticking up for one of the others against the third, or just bouncing around exploring, and I promptly don’t do anything. I let it unfold, and many times I’m watching it from a window in the house and seeing them running around listening to each other, and giving each other ideas and pieces of their imagination, and I honesty just absolutely fucking Love it. No other way to explain, I’ll get lost just watching them make memories like this one out in the front yard. Just the other day I saw my three kids playing toward the bottom of our driveway, something I must’ve done so often growing up, and I thought I’m gonna go out there and play with them, practically yearned to do so, and then I didn’t. I just said to myself, let them have this time, this brother and sister time of doing whatever crazy thing it is they are doing.

Brothers and sisters are an amazing and interesting relationship that we have in this life, and while I know that these relationships are not even close to being all of the same (I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly amongst various sibling relationships), they carry what I think is a common component. When you grow up as I did brothers and sisters tend to have an all knowing sense of each other. They will always have it. They can look into each other’s eyes with a confidence that says I know everything about you that makes you great and I know everything that doesn’t. I suppose it’s which side of that equation that you tend to look upon most that maybe ultimately determines the relationship.