We choose our "Balcony people", "Basement people" by conscious or subconscious choice, but there is a special relationship in our lives which are not made by choice, they are decided by fate. They are parents and siblings, the relationship of a lifetime right from birth.
The closeness, degree of dependency, their role in our lives, and our take on their love for us may vary over the years, like here.
Baby:
Like I said, in the previous post, this phase is about the world in just two colors, one is with these people and the other without them. They were the world for us as babies. Anything outside of them was regarded as "evil or to be treated with caution".
Toddler:
This time it is about picking up a great deal of their habits and values from them. Our world revolves around them, we observe them a great deal, our notion of what is good and bad is framed during the unconscious observation during this stage.
Teenager:
This is when the relationship takes a deviation, preferences change, they just watch over us trying not to be too intruding and also not too lenient. They go through a mix of feelings at this stage, some of us understand this, and some find it difficult to. This is the "roller coaster" ride in the journey. How we, our parents and our siblings come out of this having had misunderstandings and having stood by each other during times of success and failures, the memories of these times are some that we hold dear and look back on to draw strength for our further struggles in life.
Adult:
Maturity sets in. This is also a stage where our siblings take on a new meaning. As a elder sibling, we develop a great deal of love for the younger one. We wish their dreams true, we don't want them to trod the same path and go through the same hardships; we want it all extra special for them, we want it all rosy for them. We want it all for them with no changing degree of beauty as much as do for ourselves. For the elder one, we develop a great deal of respect too; we don't want to disappoint them and want to see them happy.
This varying degree during the different phases was all our perspective of the parents’ relationship. They did always see us with that constant love, affection, living their dreams and aspirations through us, seeing us exhibit these varying levels of closeness with them, putting up with them patiently, placing the whole world of trust in our decisions, and seeing the world with a new pair of eyes to complement the changing trend in our thoughts as we grew.
Parents-siblings were the first people in our lives, and they hold a special place always in our ever-changing world of newer relationships, friends and places.
Best things in life are for free. We did not have to pay either a price or an effort to make these relationships.
'Thank God for small mercies ; we cannot choose our relatives but we can at least choose our friends ! '
Jokes aside, I want to sum up my agreement with how you end the post with this (read on a card when I was a kid ..)
2 Golden Rules For Kids
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1. Your mom is always right.
2. If you think otherwise, see rule(1)
:-)