How I came to write Mom Still Likes You Best
I was lying on a lounge chair by a pool, next to my five-year-old grandson, and we were finding the shapes of animals in the clouds that scudded overhead. We saw alligators and camels, and birds, and of course dinosaurs. “Do they make those clouds into shapes to keep us watching?” Benji asked. “No, honey,” I said, “it’s human beings who find animals in the shapes of clouds.” That’s what we do as humans; we find meaning in the events around us. That’s why stories are the bedrock of our common experience.  I love hearing the stories of people’s lives. If you listen closely, with empathy and perspective, you can tease out some of the universal truths of our existence from the stories of our families.

When I was interviewing grown children and parents for my first book, Walking on Eggshells, the subject of brothers and sisters often came up. I was focusing on generational issues, so I didn’t follow this lead, but the area seemed more often than not a little tender, a little painful. Mothers and fathers wanted their kids to be close, even when they weren’t on speaking terms with their own brothers and sisters. Grown kids watched their parents fighting with the aunts and uncles, and vowed this wouldn’t happen to them, even while they were stealing each other’s clothing. I heard anger and guilt as much as I heard love and joy. People who didn’t get along with their siblings felt bad about it and suffered an unpleasant brew of guilt and shame and anger

The subject began to fascinate me. Brothers and sisters are our first peers. Parents are the authorities, but siblings teach us about getting along with others, putting up with differences, and learning to deal with unfairness. Unlike parents, brothers and sisters act like children all the time (they are children), and so we are forced to cope with irrationality on a daily basis. Childhood moments are never forgotten, for good or for ill. These vivid memories return when we least expect—or want—them.

Men and women in their twenties are deeply concerned about their brothers and sisters, who are islands of stability in a sea of uncertainty.  These relationships may attenuate when everybody is raising a family, but as we get older and our kids forge their own lives, our siblings become even more important. After all, they are the people we have known longest, who remember the name of the first dog and the songs we sang in the back of the car. They keep us honest—even with ourselves. Exploring our unresolved issues with siblings seemed to be a great follow-up to Walking on Eggshells. It is another piece in the puzzle of the most complex and compelling institution in human life, the family.