It’s Not So Mysterious

I have three brothers.

We grew up on the same dairy farm in Virginia.

We had the same parents all of our lives.

But

despite all that

we are pretty different people.

We grew up the same

but

we grew up different.

And I used to think that was so

mysterious.

So hard to comprehend.

I kept asking the question . . .

How can four kids be raised in the same environment, in the same home, by the same parents,

and still be so different from one another?

It’s taken me

a lot of years

and six children of my own

to find the answer.

(Or maybe not to find out the answer exactly, but to realize that my question was inherently flawed.)

My logic was off.

Way off.

The fact is

my brothers and I

(and every set of siblings in the universe)

did not grow up in the same home.

We did not share the same environment

even if we did share the same parents.

And actually,

claiming to share the same parents is completely faulty as well.

Sure,

our parents had the same name from start to finish of our growing up years.

They were called Carl and Irlanda from beginning to end.

That much is true.

But I am utterly confident that they were in no way the same people from our births to our adulthoods.

I can know this with confidence

because I know (with confidence)

that I am absolutely not the same parent today that I was ten years ago when I was first assigned the title “parent”.

I can assume that my parents did not raise my oldest brother in the exact same manner in which they raised me

because I know that I am not raising Riley in the same way that I am raising Willow.

I am convinced of this –

It is impossible to raise all of your children the same way.

Because it is impossible to stay the same parent.

Impossible not to change

with your circumstances

with your personal growth

with your parental maturity

with the ebb and flow that we call life.

I don’t get to be the same parent with Kid One as I do with Kid Six.

(Yeah.  I wouldn’t want to be.  I know enough to know that anyway.)