I’ve
spent months happily devouring Alexander McCall Smith’s series of novels
about The
#1 Ladies Detective Agency. The series follows the adventures of Precious
Ramotswe, the first lady detective in a small town in Botswana. What makes the
series singularly appealing is the peek into a gentle way of life that is passing
away (and for all I know, might never have existed, in much the same way Mayberry
represented an idealized version of 1950s rural life in the United States). For
instance, whenever Mma Ramotswe wishes to invoke "the old ways" and
establish immediate rapport with a countryman, she simply calls the other "sister"
or "brother."
In astrology, ties between siblings are represented
by the sign of Gemini and by the third house of the chart. Naturally, not
everyone shares the same idea about what it means to be a brother or a sister.
As an astrologer, I’m supposed to be unflappable; but in many years of astrological
counseling I admit I’ve been truly shocked by stories of sibling rivalries,
of betrayal and estrangement, even incest. Such stories have made me feel all
the more fortunate for having shared close bonds with my brothers and my sister.
We don’t always get along, of course; in fact, we have fought bitterly over
the years. But without them I can’t imagine who I would have become. And
I imagine the same could be said even for those who have a toxic relationship
with their siblings.
Brothers and sisters teach us our earliest lessons
about relationship. When we become infatuated with ourselves, they cut us
down to size. When others bully or mistreat us, a sibling is usually prepared
to defend us. Siblings teach us the talismanic power of words, of promises and
proprietary claims, of nicknames and teasing. Identical twins are famous for developing
secret languages no one else can understand, but if you spend ten minutes with
any pair of siblings who are reasonably close you will quickly encounter an impenetrable
fog of in-jokes and verbal shortcuts.
Not surprisingly, Gemini also
rules communication – the skills of encoding and decoding messages, of
understanding our world and making ourselves understood. Our interactions with
siblings teach us how to argue and negotiate, how to twist the knife, how to tell
a joke, and how far we can go without completely alienating someone. Brothers
and sisters teach us how to curse with real distinction, how to outwit authorities
(especially our parents), and how to navigate the dynamics of competition.
This
may be why siblings, no matter how different when they’re young, seem to
resemble each other more and more as they age. My sister and I, born eighteen
months apart, started life with very different looks and nearly opposite personalities.
At this stage in our lives, though, we look and sound so much alike that when
I attended a party at my sister’s home a few years ago, complete strangers
had no problem identifying my relationship to the hostess and came up to introduce
themselves. Our relationship has honed us both until we are now more alike
than different – nearly like Castor
and Pollux, the mythical twins associated with the constellation of Gemini.
Our brothers and sisters teach us how to interact with others and by extension,
they teach us who we are. By negotiating a role for ourselves among our siblings,
we define ourselves. To a lesser extent this is also true of our neighbors
(also ruled by Gemini and the third house of the horoscope), to whom we’re
also yoked by common turf, mutual interests, and subtle competition. Few of us
would admit that we feel pressure to "keep up with the Joneses," but
it’s difficult not to compare your old jalopy and crabgrass-infested lawn
to your neighbor’s bright new sedan and expensive landscaping. We naturally
compare ourselves to those whose circumstances closely resemble our own - just
as we might compare ourselves with a brother or sister.
When a family loses
a sibling, it’s like losing spokes on a wheel: it may still turn, but the
vehicle becomes wobbly. One of my brothers died suddenly, in 1995, at the age
of only 40. Our mother died two years later, and as devastating as that was, I
realized that the loss of a sibling is in many ways an even graver tragedy.
After all, as my mother once suggested, you can reasonably expect to someday lose
your parents, but subconsciously we expect our siblings - our partners in crime
- to walk with us to the end of our journey. To this day whenever I gather with
my sister and our remaining brother, we speak of our parents and we miss them;
but our departed sibling is there with us, tingling like an amputated limb.
Few
people in our lives get the opportunity to influence us when we are so malleable
as in childhood, when brothers and sisters leave their handprints on us as they
might in wet cement. But the truth is that while the emotional connection may
be less compelling, we share similar bonds with people who share our neighborhoods,
our communities, our alma mater, our mother tongue, the country of our birth.
Ask any expatriate about the thrill of hearing his native accent or language spoken
while in a foreign land. And the next time you’re at a party with a lot of
people your age, introduce a tag line from a commercial or television show that
was popular when you were in grade school. Suddenly, you’ll find that you’re
among siblings who understand something about your history and who speak your
language.
At this Gemini New Moon, we celebrate our brothers and sisters
– our siblings by birth, as well as siblings under the same Spirit. When
we call each other "brother" or "sister" we, like Mma Ramotswe,
invoke the bonds of sharing, memory, and community. We summon visions of a native
landscape on a sun-dappled summer’s morning; of weeping in front of a television
on November 22, 1963 and September 11, 2001; of childhood dreams of a remarkable
future. When we call those who share our day-to-day lives "brother"
or "sister," we acknowledge the simple truth that we are family. That
we make each other what we are, and we are more alike than we know. And although
we may not always get along, who would we be without one another?
