I have three brothers. Sometimes this fact prompts an acquaintance to ask of my childhood, “What was it like to be the only girl?” The question makes me feel like I’m being asked to chart a kite’s course on a spring day. I feel pressured to plot the movements of something that is by nature freewheeling. My mind goes blank, like the open expanse of sky around the kite.
I respond in a way that’s succinct and uninteresting: “It was good, I liked it.” If other questions follow, I don’t elaborate. “Did your brothers pick on you?” No, they mostly fought with each other. “Are they protective of you?” I don’t know; not particularly. My replies suffice, and conversation moves on.
Truly sitting with the question, “What is it like to have all brothers?” stirs a sensation in me that occurs when I am surrounded by them. I partake in a form of improvisation with my brothers that I don’t display before other people; neither can I summon it when I am alone. My silliness unplugs in their presence. Like a tapped spring, it shimmers forth. This playfulness manifests in contorted facial expressions, odd tones of voice, spontaneous shenanigans. The earliest instances of it that I can recall happened at the end of elementary school days. Released from the decorum of the school setting, I could finally relax. My kite could cruise and twirl, carefree.
Gibberish that erupts in my brothers’ presence is like an obscure language I am able to practice only at rare times with a select group of people. I need to speak it when I am with them lest it join the hundreds of world languages that become less and less frequently used until one day they disappear altogether. It’s shy. It skitters away in the presence of guests. But when I am alone with my brothers, it squawks its strange cry and splays its feathers like a member of an endangered species.
Use of such language — verbal and nonverbal — is an unconscious code-switching. I am not being insincere when I do not exhibit it in front of acquaintances. I could not evoke it if I tried. My behavior is a chemical reaction that occurs only in the presence of specific elements: my brothers the reactants; my uninhibited self the product.
If my modes of expression were visualized in a personal art museum, the wing representing communication with my siblings would be abstract modern. It would be off-limits to the public. Were patrons to stumble upon it, they would be unable to discern any of the detailed realism characterizing my other periods. They would be struck by the vibrancy of the works while questioning their meaning. Leaning in close to read the placards, they would find no description if they found any text at all — viewers left to ponder the wild brushstrokes, splotches and drips without guiding interpretation.
The ability to communicate with my brothers in novel, meaningful ways solidifies my status as a sibling. It confirms me as part of a tribe whose patterns are deeply entrenched. Eccentricities rocket past my prefrontal cortex and burst onto the scene.
Such expression is the antithesis of the kind of language I use when an acquaintance asks, in passing, how it is to have brothers. The question is light. However, in search of an answer, I feel I must sum up the cultural practices of an entire country, convey its rhythms and rituals, and represent distant, deep-seated stretches of myself.
“What was it like to be the only girl?”
Rather than feeling the need to compose a comprehensive answer, I can allow myself to feel a tug upwards, toward a part of me that sails free. The truth of the experience, like a kite dancing toward the sun, is something I can only squint at. Since I am the one anchoring the line, I can try to convey the sentiment: I place one word after another in a string of expression. The attempt lengthens like a kite’s tail. I seek to link the swooping, erratic movements to the part of me that’s standing on the ground. But even there, I find many words remain on the spool, held close to my chest.
Erin Buckley lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she works as an occupational therapist.