i remember my mother saying, long ago, that she wanted me to have a sibling so that i "wouldn't be alone." it's only just hit me, after a friend remembered her own mother saying the same. one can feel perfectly alone in a house full of siblings, of course, and one can be perfectly content without any. but on the whole it makes a difference: to have someone other than your parents in your parents' home; to have a person with whom you share your earliest memories, a history, a lifetime of inside jokes. it makes a difference when someone knows first-hand how you were raised, in what circumstances, and with which supports.

perhaps the years of separation from her own brother made this more pronounced--the fact that she didn't want me to be alone in life.