Virginia asked me this question last week and it has infected my brain.  Finally, tonight I just sat down and pounded out my thoughts, which follow in their raw form.  First, her question(s):

what would you have been like as an “only” child? what do you think is your core personality (and how would it have manifested had there been no competition), and what influence did your place in the family have on you? would you have been more nurtured and self-confident as an only, more annoying or narcissistic, an artist or writer, or under a microscope and the peacekeeper between your parents?
***************************************************************

Who am I and how did I get here?  Who is this person tapping at the keyboard in a turquoise colored office, at a glass-topped desk in a house in eastern Nebraska, with a little girl in the next room and a husband driving his truck to the store to buy paper napkins? 

Who is this person whose phone is filled with a call log of numbers from Mississippi to Maryland, Texas to California?  Who is this woman who knows how to bake bread, drive a stick shift, draw a tree, start a fire in a wood stove, play ditch-’em, cribbage, cutthroat Monopoly and Scrabble?  Who is she, this exhausted woman who, at nearly 42, has only 39 credit hours toward an English degree, a Real Estate salesperson license, a 14-year-old car, rooms full of books and a dread fear of grasshoppers?

She is me.  I am she.  I’m her.  I’m Mary. 

I’m the accumulated silt and detritus of the flowing stream of time and place and circumstance of my parents and my eleven brothers and sisters.  I am connected by invisible, unbreakable tensile cables to siblings who share the shape of my chin, the wave in the back of my hair, the shape of my smile and the lift in my voice.  We are connected by events that shaped first our parents and then ourselves.  Without their influence in every facet of my life, I would not be where I am today.  I would not be facing this direction, I would not know the joy of my husband and daughter, I would not look the way I do now.

Life would be vastly different—better? Or worse?   It all comes down to this: if I were an only child, I would be someone, but I would not be this someone.  I would not be me. 

I think of the parallel life being lived right now by the Mary who didn’t have brothers or sisters.  Had my parents not had other children, I might be sixty years old right now, the first and only child they had.  If they had waited to have me until 1968, I would be the only child of parents who were 39 and 43 when I was born. 

Either way, I probably would have grown up in a nicer home:  even on a small salary, there’s more than enough for just one child.  I would probably not have been taunted in school for being poor, and I probably would not have seemed remarkable to anyone.  I might have been just another kid, instead of that girl from the big family. 

I can see it now.  My own room growing up, maybe even my own telephone in high school.  Decent clothes, new shoes, pretty hair.  A boyfriend, maybe several over time.  Then college. Since I would be the only one, I’d go to a University, probably graduate.  Born with a love of words, I’d probably have a degree in English and maybe even a Master’s degree.  I’d marry some really smart, driven man I met in college and we’d have a few kids, a dog. 

Or.

I’d be the only child of my parents and suffocate under their relentless scrutiny.  My rebellion would be epic.  Aching for validation and support, I would abuse alcohol or drugs, and treat my parents with contempt.  I’d squander my potential and end up living with them, working dead-end jobs and daydreaming about how life might have turned out if I’d just done things differently.

How do I know?  Because the potential for both these extremes lies within me.  But without the guiding and deterring forces of my siblings, it’s hard to know if I would have found a middle ground or if I would have spun completely off the edge. 

What if?  That’s such a dangerous question.  It can suck you in and make you wistful, or scare the hell out of you. What if I had been an only child? Who would I be?  What would I be like?  Would I still be scared of grasshoppers if Nine and Ten hadn’t existed to crush them in front of my face or stick them down the back of my shirt?   Would I be a master at the hide-and-seek game of ditch-’em if I had not been pursued by my sister Twelve and her friends through the neighborhood?  Would I have this life I have now if I had not been urged on or pulled up short by the people who shared my DNA?

How much thinner would my skin be if I hadn’t learned to take mockery, rejection and teasing as a child?  How would I learn compromise, negotiation and patience without having to share resources, shelter and a bathroom with so many other people?  How would I know the many colors and moods of parenthood if I hadn’t seen the gamut of it from my parents as they dealt with one, then five, then ten, then twelve children? 

If I had met and married someone else, then where would PC be now?  Even more importantly, where would Rabbit be?  Would the butterfly effect of our lives have meant Rabbit was never born because my parallel life interfered somehow with the circumstances of her birth mother’s life?  If she were still born, would she have languished in foster care?  Who would she be today? 

The questions keep rushing at me.  I remember being a teenager and thinking a few times that the world would have been better off without me.  Never once did I consider how the world would be without my siblings.  A wonderful man from New Jersey would never have met and married my sister.  Beautiful drawings would never be made by my brother Four.  Mentally handicapped adults might never have taken a trip to the Black Hills if my sister Five hadn’t devoted most of her professional life to programs giving them a normal life with jobs, vacations and hobbies.  Jokes untold, recipes never developed, songs unsung, laughter silenced, arguments and stories never recorded.  A house undamaged by running feet, windows unbroken by footballs, children and grandchildren never born, never loved, never lost, never cherished. 

Erase the impact of the 44 living descendants of my parents, and there’s a gaping hole in this world.  Subtract me from the equation and put me back on this earth without them, and there’s a gaping hole in my life.  Without them, I am not me. 

Think of your life.  Think of what matters.  Where you are and what you do and how you live—those things all matter.  They are all made up of what went before, who blazed your trail, who guided you along the way.  For me, those people surrounded me growing up.  They were a forest of people taller than me, the reaching hand of my little sister, the shouts and murmurs of people I knew better than I knew myself.  They were all parts of a bigger entity, a family that is scattered now, but who make up the very valves and chambers of my beating heart.