She’s poised to turn 17, my daughter, Rachel. And guess what? It feels like yesterday I was lying on the sofa, my impossibly tiny two-day-old baby girl asleep on my chest, as content as I have been before or since. Where on earth did those years go? Seriously: the laws of physics appear to have been defied.
I ought to report it to Nasa or Stephen Hawking or Cambridge University or some such.
Scandalous, the way life accelerates as we hurtle towards the grave.
Steady on, no need for that sort of talk, not with spring just around the corner and the mighty Tigers’ promotion quest in excellent order. At the time of writing, anyway – I can’t speak for any balls-ups prior to publication.
My point is that, following her imminent birthday, Rachel will for a blissful fortnight be officially only one year younger than Sam, her brother, who will be 19 at the end of the month. It is, admittedly, a short-lived period – and not much to get excited about in any case – but it matters to her. Once, aged around five or six, she cornered her parents to pose the question arising from her realisation of the ghastly truth. “Why,” she demanded, “wasn’t I born FIRST?”
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Funny business, sibling rivalry. They both feel it, even if, as indicated, Rachel expresses her frustrations more openly.
I mentioned the charity “swimathon” Sam and I are doing in a fortnight – big thanks for all the sponsorships so far, by the way, much appreciated. When Sam did his first one, four years ago I think, Rachel was not best pleased with all the attention and praise he received. I jollied her out of her mood by suggesting that perhaps next year she could get an aqualung and a harpoon and hang about in the deep end to make sure her brother never did anything so laudable ever again.
She had the good grace to laugh.
She didn’t much like it either when Sam was in his first year at catering college and one night triumphantly brought home a superbly executed fruit flan.
“What you should have done, sweetheart,” I suggested, “was intercept him on the Tube on the way back. Abseil down from the roof of a tunnel like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, smash his flan to bits with a baseball bat, melt away into the night.”
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She laughed at that, too.
“What would you have done if I had?” she asked.
“Called the news desk,” I told her. “ ‘Blonde Teenage Girl in Brutal Pastry-Based Assault’? Good story, that.”
Sam, for his part, likes to talk wistfully and only a little bit self-mockingly of the “two [less a fortnight] best years of my life”, ie, the time he was around before his sister arrived. Nicola and I got married a year after Sam was born. Thus he was present at our wedding (one of my elderly uncles was outraged), while Rachel, obviously, was not. He likes to remind his sister of his attendance about once a month.
Once, when she was about two and he was about four and Nicola took them out to the park, Rachel bent over a low fence to admire the geranium-rich border on the other side. Sam didn’t hang about: planting a firm foot on his baby sister’s backside, he shoved hard. With the desired result. Flipping over the fence like a gymnast on the asymmetric bars, Rachel went splat straight into the flowerbed.
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So while everyone loves Sam – as well they might, he is (not that I’m biased or anything) a lovely lad – he is not immune, as Rachel never tires of pointing out, to sly and not so sly displays of simmering rivalry and resentment. And not just when he was 4, but now, at almost 19. Such displays are always robustly reciprocated by his sister.
This ongoing occasional sibling antagonism used to upset me terribly, until my wife reassured me it was not only perfectly normal, but also healthy. As kids, Nicola revealed, she would tease and taunt Colin, her youngest brother, without mercy – pretending to be deaf, hurling large soft toys at him to knock him over, and so forth. And now Nicola, at 51, and Colin, at 45, get on famously. No harm done.
My wife is seldom, if ever, mistaken. And lo, I see the signs of adult harmony between my offspring starting to emerge.
I see Rachel loyally sticking to some blatantly concocted, frankly implausible explanation of a domestic breakage clearly perpetrated by her brother in their parents’ absence.
I see him faithfully trudging out in the wind and rain to escort her home from the bus stop if she’s coming back after dark. I see, in short, the future possibility of mutual care, concern and affection after their mum and dad have left the stage.
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Which counts as a major success, I reckon.
robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk mailto:robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk