Siblings and the Folly of Comparison

Perhaps you can relate.

If you grew up with a sibling or siblings, or, once reaching adulthood you found yourself in a house full of siblings, you know that kids can share surnames, facial structure, hairlines, I dunno…anything that can be connected via chromosome handoff to one another. But that might be as far as it goes.

Maybe ‘sharing’ isn’t exactly the most fitting word. Lord knows having to share an open bag of Doritos or the video game console or even the back seat of a car with my brothers was like asking two warring Middle East countries to put down their weapons and hug things out. It just doesn’t happen sometimes, even with great parents (like we were blessed with) trying to show us by walking the walk.

Drew and Alex shared many common traits when they were younger. Born after almost identical gestation periods, delivery length identical, weight on the baby scale only two ounces apart. They even reached many of the milestones infants and toddlers reach almost exactly the same. It wasn’t really until after Alex reached the age of two that their ‘sharing’ of traits diverged.

Alex was diagnosed with autism officially 10 months later. I had my doubts many months before then. And I rationalized away some of his autistic traits because he and Drew had, until then, been so very similar. I didn’t listen to my gut.

Alex was always a fussy baby. He would always need to be held or rocked before he’d fall asleep. He never took a bottle of formula much to the chagrin of my permanently sleep-deprived wife. She nursed him for 21 months–long after he had teeth. I wince just thinking about that kind of discomfort.

So I’ve long ago abandoned the quaint notion that my two sons would follow down a path similar to each other as they grew.

When I’m on Facebook I see many of my peers posting photos of their offspring siblings playing sports together, or fishing, perhaps dying Easter eggs or decorating cookies. These are bucolic, wholesome and happy moments which should be proudly captured on camera and disseminated to everyone.

But the reality of my world, my family’s world, is different. After last month’s episode with an emergency call placed to 9-1-1, subsequent ambulance ride and many, many little flare-ups of behavior–some disconcerting, some downright shocking–have left Kat and I with the difficult reality that we are no longer able to meet Alex’s needs as we struggle to meet Drew’s and, finally, our own needs, both as a couple and as individuals.

We have been looking into placing Alex in a group home.

My heart is so heavy that my hands don’t seem to move quick enough to type the words that you’re reading. I apologize for the rambling.

As I alluded to at the end of my last blog post, our visit to the hospital emergency room concluded with a determination that there are few “correct” places in the fabric of our society here in our community to accept children that don’t walk the same path as most “neurotypical” kids.

And all the respite we can get, all the Sheetrock I can buy to repair the holes punched in our walls, all the gallons of spilled milk we’ve sopped up, all of the thousands of diapers we’ve changed, all the tears we have wiped off of all of our cheeks–none of it seems to be the last time. We are running an endless, uphill marathon. We are losing our breath at the same time our legs are giving out.

The proper placement for Alex is out there–somewhere. But as I mentioned, it’s not available right now, nor will it be around the corner from our home. We don’t know when we will have to drop off our little guy with his protective helmet, a few fuzzy blankets and a photo book of his family that loves him more than he might ever know and hear the door lock behind us. But it’s gonna suck when that day comes.

I keep on remembering that comparing our life to others is extremely detrimental to our happiness. I even wrote a ham-fisted haiku about it.

But to hope for happier days at La Casa Bertellotti is only possible if our situation changes.

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Ponder this harsh ploy
Most conniving thief to joy
Is comparison