I have three of them, and I love them beyond words. I formed the opinion that my siblings are the most amazing people on this earth currently when I was about 8 years old. My older sister had always been the mother of the house. I remember her being a lanky teenager with cropped, black hair, dishing out orders.
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After situations beyond our control made my mother leave us when we were still very tender, my sister took up that responsibility without batting an eyelid.
My sister was not such a good cook yet, but she tried her best to ensure that we ate palatable meals. I remember her returning from school with heavy bags of foodstuff and calling my older brother and me into the kitchen to assist her.
She was the one who first spoke to me about the monthly cycle of a woman and what to do just in case she wasn't around me at the moment I started to experience my own. Then I didn't even understand what she was talking about until I experienced it for the first time. Thankfully, she was there to assist me on that very day.
My sister and I were not so close but I looked up to her for everything. When she cut her hair, I wanted mine to be cut too. When she had a particular outfit, I wanted to have it too. When she started reading novels, I started reading them too. She was my mirror and she was faultless in my eyes.
My older brother was the exact opposite.
We fought a lot when we were younger, I could almost not do anything right in his sight and he in turn could never be correct in my sight. My sister used to be the one to settle the disputes between us but they seemed to be unstoppable so she got tired and just let us do our thing.
My brother always said he saw me as a rude, spoiled brat when we were growing up and I in turn saw him as a stubborn, wicked boy.
Yet despite all of this, I was his partner in crime. There was no place my brother wanted to go to secretly without carrying me along with him. We went to play video games together, went to play ball together, and there was even a day we went to pluck some mangoes from someone's compound.
We were returning from school that day when my brother spotted ripe, juicy mangoes on Papa Aboy's tree. Papa Aboy lived just beside us but he never allowed anyone into his compound; not even when people who didn't have water in the estate wanted to fetch from his compound.
Because of this, my brother suggested that we use a long stick to pluck the mangoes, we saw a stick nearby and attempted to use it but the mangoes fell back into the compound instead of on the floor outside the fence where we were standing.
“What are we going to do now? I suggest that we return home and just ask mummy to buy mangoes for us tomorrow” I told him but he was staring intently at the tree, as if he had a different idea.
“I can climb this fence…” Before I could warn him not to, he had flung his backpack to the ground and was climbing the fence. He successfully plucked 4 mangoes before sighting Papa Aboy. He jumped to the ground and we took to our heels. We never spoke about that incident to anyone.
My younger brother used to be a sweet child when we were younger. He was very chubby and quiet and I was really fond of him, especially when he had not begun to talk.
When my brother started talking, I was caught up in more trouble than I had been in because of my older brother. He reported everything I did to him and to my other siblings. My older brother usually said it was karma.
Once my younger brother saw me ransacking my older sister's bag, I didn't even know he had seen me until my father returned from work.
“Daddy I have something to tell you” every time he began like that, we knew one of us was in trouble.
“Tell me, what is it?” And my father never missed an opportunity to indulge him.
“I saw Treasure searching Big sis school bag”
I knew instantly that I was going to get into trouble. My father had warned us to stop reading romance novels and that was exactly what I was searching for in my sister's bag.
“And what did you keep in your sister's bag that you had to go search for when no one was looking?” My father turned to me, his brows already creasing with displease.
“I was looking for a pen. Mine has finished” If I hadn't told that lie, I would have received a good thrashing that afternoon.
My siblings are all grown now and they have dropped most of the childish attitudes they used to exhibit but every time I think back, I laugh and shake my head, we have all come a long way.
