Breaking Out Of Bondage

I remember quite clearly the blood that gushed out of my brother's nose the day I punched him on the beak. I was both horrified, guilty, and yet strangely exultant. And the countless number of times I talked him into potentially dangerous situations, carrying that authoritative air of an older sibling. Like the summer I nearly got him drowned at a local beach. Or like the scar he carries on his forehead to this day, a remembrance of the time I persuaded him to dive from a rusty oil drum to another one shallowly filled with rainwater.

And what about those times we ganged up on the middle sister, making her cry, then tickling her to make her laugh hysterically. Everyday, over and over again, like some demented science experiment gone haywire. Its a wonder she didn't end up laced in a straitjacket in a white padded room. Or the countless times at the dinner table when someone would let fly a piece of bone (or a utensil, or a slipper, or a plate) at a sibling across its width. Or even the time, the middle sister got second degree burns from a steaming platter of newly-cooked rice upended on her lap by brother dearest.

Cats and dogs had nothing on us.

Even my husband and his sisters have their own battle stories. Inday has a burn scar on her back where Atch had once thrust a lighted firecracker. And Atch tells of the time he ran and left 8-year-old Nathalie alone in the family car when the hood caught fire. Underaged and sans a license, he had taken the car for a spin, with his youngest sister along. If it weren't for concerned bystanders who rescued Nat and threw sand on the fire, the gas tank would have have gone kaboom.

All this history has me marveling at the pair of boys that sprung from our loins, whose first act upon getting up every morning is to put their arms around each other and coo high-pitched unintelligible syllables with blissful smiles on their faces.

We had expected Woog to openly resent the intrusion of the baby, who bumped him from his number one status in the household. We prepared ourselves for the eventuality, both physically and mentally bracing ourselves for war. Instead, we were nonplussed from day one.

Woog is deeply in love with Eli. And vice versa.


We remain startled, unbelieving, and deeply surprised as every single day, without fail, these brothers who spring from a long line of bloody sibling wars - their ancestors once chased each other down rural mountainsides, after one sibling shot the other with a BB gun - greet each other with tight hugs and enthusiastic smooches.


The evidence is incontrovertible. The only person who can quiet Eli during a tooth-growing tantrum is his Manong Woog. Normally not a morning person, Woog would scream blue murder and kick at anyone who'd try to get him up at the unholy hour of 7am. Put Eli into the equation, and he'd be up and giggling within seconds.

Eli is the only child we have ever seen Woog share his toys with. Ever. No one, and I mean no one (not even his own mother), can cause Eli to scream in hysterical laughter like his brother. He is the one-man audience to Woog's stand-up routines (no one else can summon up the time or the patience.

We are holding our breaths in suspense. Will this outrageously wonderful situation change? Given our histories, Atch and I keep expecting it to. And we are bloody idiots who cannot comprehend this miracle in front of our noses. This breaking of the chain, this re-routing off the beaten path. This gloriously open expression of brotherly love that breaks all the bondage of sibling rivalry in our family through the ages.

They are blessed. We are blessed. We give thanks.