I am the oldest of five children, born in three different decades and two different millenia. When my youngest brother became a teenager two years back, it was the first time we didn’t have a child in my immediate family in 28 years. I love being part of a big family. Noise, chaos, and no personal space are natural to me. Maybe that’s how I have managed to survive almost a decade of commuting into Chicago from the suburbs, take a train a rush hour and you’ll experience all three. When I moved out on my own I had to deal with the quiet. I didn’t like it. I have picked up the bad habit of having noise on constantly. Even when I shower I bring my laptop into the bathroom and play episodes on Netflix. I can barely hear the show over the water, but I still need to hear some faint, indistinguishable background noise.
I am grateful that David also came from a big, boisterous family. It has made it easier for us to visit my family where you can expect two conversations to be occurring at the same time and expect a lot of movement as my brothers and sisters come and go.
Someone once asked me if I would like a big family too one day or if I had my fill and would like a small quiet family. I responded that if I were to have one well behaved child (think Rod or Todd Flanders) I wouldn’t know what to him or myself. As the oldest, I wasn’t born into a large family, unlike my youngest brother, but I was a part of one. I was bred to crave the noise and confusion. I was taught how to cook for small army. And now as an adult, I would like nothing more than to return to the daily life in a large family.
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