I am a second born kid. Suresh is one too. This means we
both have a sibling older than us. I am really glad because we kind of figure
out the reason for why our second born behaves a certain way sometimes. SOMETIMES.
We have been seeing for a while now how Ziva is always
asking for something. We have done our absolute level best to ensure that we
treat both of them equally. But I think the inequality creeped in anyway when Ziva
was born 1 year and 10 months later.
A few days ago, Ziva walked down the stairs after a shower
with a shorts and the tshirt and someone who was sitting at our table waiting
for lunch called out ‘HI! You are wearing Isaac’s clothes’. She looked down at
herself and said as confidently as she could ‘No I am not!’. But the truth was
she was! I felt a pang of guilt. I also realized that Ziva had a lot of hand me
downs. Not crummy ones but still they were a seconds ... used. I really have no
problem with seconds. I personally used to love wearing my cousins and sisters
hand me downs. But I think somewhere along, this trade down of items causes a bit
of a scar.
To talk about clothes alone, it seems like Ziva has a lot of
clothes and Isaac too few. But if you look closely a lot of what Ziva has is
mainly hand me downs. Including from cousins. A few months ago when we visited
my sister, she took Isaac and Ziva to the hypermart to buy some color books and
pencils. (We had left our pencil box and book bag on our flight to Mumbai).
Isaac walked in and bought one drawing book and one set of color pencils. My
sister asked him if he wanted a fancy pencil box or a bag or anything. He held
his drawing book and said, ‘This is all I need’. Ziva on the other hand needed
no coaxing. She soon had picked up a pink bag a pencil box, crayons etc.
I honestly find it hard that I raised both of them in the
same household, with the same facilities. Yet my little girl had chosen to pick
up random stuff that she probably never would use. I think all she wanted was
something that someone bought just for her! Not a hand me down, not a second thought.
Just for her!
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| Wearing Isaac's swim clothes |
The theory of and downside of hand me downs: If its clothes, they rarely fit properly. They almost are never the color you like. This works very heavily especially if one person is a pink lover and the other a green lover. If toys or other items, they always seem scratched or used. There is never that pleasure of opening up something new.
Suresh and I have similar stories. Stories of wanting our
parents to buy us something. Stories where we adamantly demanded something that
was probably unreasonable or unnecessary. Suresh once sat on a tricycle and
refused to get off it till his parents had to finally buy it. I remember
wearing so many hand me downs and since I was a size smaller, spending many hours
tightening skirts and shortening salwar kameez’s that belonged to my sister. I
did use this as an opportunity to make them a little extra short and a little
extra tight 😉. While I did love her clothes, about the 11th
grade I made a total wardrobe switch and started wearing nothing but T-shirts
and Jeans. This reduced the sharing I could do and I stopped the pipeline of
hand me downs. Ziva has already started on those lines where she prefers wearing skirts and dresses to pants or shorts 😊. I say smart kid.
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| Isaac's sweater |
We were recently planning to get a new bicycle for Isaac since
he is starting to ride mine now. As we talked about it I saw Zivas expectant
look. We kind of held back our decision. In about 1 year and 10 months, Ziva
would be using my cycle too. We would wait till that time to buy a cycle they
both would share. No more hand me downs. Changing to a world of sharing and equal
opportunity.
