Only Child by Birth
Story from Dinner With the Elams 1.4
Hi, I’m Andrea. If you’ve only seen me perform improv and never heard me tell a story before you may think after, “oh wow she should stick to the storytelling” or “okay that’s why she only plays herself in a scene” or “this girl loves to talk.”
If you’ve never seen me perform at all, I really love to talk.
When Scott called and said he and Erica and Brett would love if I told a story tonight it flattered me to a degree I was embarrassed by.
“There’s no theme but maybe family since we’re siblings,” he said and for a second I thought he considered me like a sister but then I realized he was talking about their improv troupe.
This “no theme but theme” stumped me with writer’s block like you couldn’t imagine.
Not because family is hard for me. I’m in the unique situation where I’m close to my family but I also have two families since I’m a child of divorce.
This makes me want to say clap your hands if your a child of divorce ummm but I won’t.
I’m an only child by birth. This is a line I love to say that no one else seems to think is funny. I suppose if you’re an older sibling you’re like, yeah same?
But maybe one day I will say this to someone who is also an only child by birth, whose parents married people who had children and their only siblings are by marriage and they’ll laugh and laugh. Clap your hands if you’re an only child by birth…I’m just kidding.
On my dad’s side, I have Bailey and Scott, whom I’m in the middle of. On my mom’s side, I have Caroline, who I’m three years older than.
So I’m an only child, a middle child, and an older sister. And what’s interesting, is I’m all three of these stereotypes.
Only child:
I’m bad at organized sports. Maybe that’s also due to lack of hand eye coordination, and clumsiness, and an inability to run. I think I lack aptitude for athletics because I wasn’t raised on a “team”. Sure, you can make the argument I should have been able to hit a tennis ball in a singles match especially after all the lessons and the camps and my dad throwing his hands up and saying just hit the ball, but where would my understanding of competition even begin? Why would I want to “hit” the ball?
Interrupting conversations. I’m talking and everyone should be listening. When you don’t learn how to share the limelight, you have a hard time not going full interrupting cow into a story. Editor’s note: interrupting cow knock knock joke was my favorite knock knock joke.
Sharing fries. I can honestly share almost everything, but fries. However, if Emily were here she’d say I was really bad at sharing clothes. I’d like to say she was really bad at giving me what she borrowed back. Five years after we graduated college we were driving in her car down the PCH Hwy in Southern California and I found a photograph of my dad when he was in his 20s, as well as a mixed CD from Margaret 1, and a loose DVD of A Knights Tale that I still had the box of in my collection.
Middle child:
A little different than the rest. In this case, unpopular. In this case, unmarried. In this case, unsuburban.
Always getting a little in trouble: my door was removed from its hinges, I had a bedtime that the other two didn’t, I got shh’d for being loud.
The funny one. I could and can make everyone laugh at the dinner table.
Older sister:
I’m always right.
I’m a comforter and a protector. The confidant and the knower of all matters of the heart.
The fighter and the apologizer. Like we could be in Paris, on the most beautiful spring day that feels a little like summer, the Seine sparkling beside us as we walk, and we could be in the biggest drag out fight. I’m mad at her for being what I consider manipulative, and she’s mad at me for being what she considers bossy and unrelenting. We’ll both have our arms crossed and as minutes pass the anger will fade, our arms will loosen to our sides, and then around each other’s waists, laughing again until the next fight. That’s just kinda off the top of my head, not an exact scenario or anything.
Honestly, this feels like a lot of information. Sometimes after breaking down the family tree a vulnerability hangover washes over me. “Ha ha that’s me” I say and my heart with stitches, and Disney bandaids, and the wrist guard I wore to pretend I had a broken wrist, and then the cast I wore to correct my broken wrist from not wearing my wrist guard all exposed.
I also don’t know why it feels so complicated to explain. In Cheaper by the Dozen they had 12 kids and I feel like that could be a much worse conversation to have. “My parents loved sex! They couldn’t have enough of it! They had it 12 times!”
I guess I should destigmatize parents having sex. It’s only natural. If you’re one of 12 I’m really sorry. Here I am trying to make you feel something for me, one of one, while I’ll never walk a mile in your hand me down shoes.
There was a time where I kind of imagined this scenario. A Drake and Josh, a Yours, Mine, and Ours, a Brady Bunch. Especially a Brady Bunch because then I’d be tall, blonde, and thin.
My parents divorced when I was six. They walked consciously uncoupling so Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin could run with it,
Editor’s note: Speaking of Gwyneth Paltrow, on New Year’s Eve I was tipsy, stumbling on my words to a stranger and she said “You look like Gwyneth Paltrow” and I said “Oh my gosh you think so?” and she said, “Yeah, I’m agreeing with you. Isn’t that what you said?” It wasn’t, but I still took the compliment like she came up with it.
My parents stayed friends and coparented me. I don’t feel like I missed out on by having divorced parents. My childhood was unlimited one on one time split between my favorite people in the world. It was magic in many ways. I don’t know what the statistics of only children are and I like my idea that it’s low; that only a few of us are out there like a rare occurrence. Like only a few of us know the parallels of pure pleasure and loneliness.
I also made a D in statistics (D is for diploma!) so even if I were to Google it I wouldn’t understand the results at all.
My mom and I lived in the country for several years in a log cabin with lots of acreage. There was a man made pond in the back yard and I’d walk down there to listen up close to the bull frogs deep rum hum. I enjoyed having the property to myself, I enjoyed the stories I would create in my head, but I also stood there knowing another reality existed where life wouldn’t feel so isolating; that there could be more.
When my Dad and Dorothy married, blending our family was hard. Trying to fit in with a brother and sister who already had a built in ecosystem. I wanted in on it so bad and my desperation wafted off every decision I made. The decisions were questionable to be fair; SpongeBob impressions, following them around, calling them my brother and sister before our parents even got married. To them I was just a stranger in their house, to me they were my life.
But then a miracle happened.
Shrek came out.
Shrek has the greatest soundtrack of all time. It has a Baha Men song that is better than Who Let the Dogs out, it has Eddie Murphy covering I’m a Believer, it has Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Hallelujah.
And I know Christmas is over but just a reminder that even though the Pentatonix put it on their Christmas album Hallelujah is not a Christmas song. It doesn’t even reference Jesus. It references biblical affairs but not a baby in a manger. It’s a song about betraying your lover and it’s one of my favorite songs of all time (child of divorce much lol) but it is not a Christmas song.
When our family went and saw Shrek, we left the theaters by dancing through the aisles and down the stairs. This is not a hyperbole, this is not revisionist history, this happened in the Cool Springs Thoroughbred Regal theater.
I have a scrapbook page dedicated to the day we went and saw Shrek. I still have our movie ticket stubs.
When my Mom and Sam got married, blending the family was easy. Caroline is also an only child by birth and Caroline’s mother had passed away years earlier, something unimaginable but beautiful in how we were able to fit together like a puzzle that had been sitting on a side table for some time.
We didn’t need Shrek, but Shrek 3 had just come out.
And we don’t need to talk about the Shrek 3 soundtrack. It has Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin on it, famously one of the saddest songs of all time. I mean hell, Pentatonix put that on your Christmas album. Now there’s a song about a father who feels like a God and a son that becomes him. A song I couldn’t relate to, because I now had two dads that were present. If I were athletic, they could throw me a ball. Actually, my dad was still asking me to just hit the ball…hit the ball, Andrea.
Something interesting that happens when your parents get divorced is that they have to create chosen family. Today, chosen family is a buzzword but in the 90s, and in the south, it felt relatively avant-garde. My dad lived with his coworker and I stayed there too, my mom and I lived with her best friend for a minute. My dad came over on Christmas mornings to open presents with his ex wife and daughter. We rang in the new year with my best friend’s family. I watched my parents have these incredible support systems. Younger friends they could feel unburdened by, friends that had years of marriage ahead of them, friends who accepted what felt like an unconventional lifestyle.
My parents inspired a lot of things in my life; I’ll park a half a mile away to not pay for parking but I’ll spend hundreds of dollars on a handbag. Quick with a meal, quick with a call, quick with an actionable plan. And even though they ultimately found family, their ability to create family has influenced most of my life.
For so long I didn’t have siblings grounding me in a stereotype and so I found friends that did. I didn’t have a nuclear family, so I invited myself into Margaret 1’s. I didn’t have anyone to share a bedroom, so I had sleepovers most weekends.
When you’re younger, you’re self conscious about how you’re perceived. I was, and I guess even still, self conscious about how my family is perceived. Despite knowing that complicated familial relationships in our one uniter. And that we all have the gift to choose our own.
At Bec’s annual New Year’s Day vision boarding, Cal talked about moving back home to Maine then back here to Nashville. “I need to be where my people are,” they said. “My people are home.”
I nodded in agreement and smiled. I thought about my friends who slept over at my single dad’s house, I thought about the pallet parties we’d have on the floor of our family room with Bailey and Scott, I thought about the sleepovers I have with my friends now. I thought about how my parents chose friends to make our family feel larger. I thought about how my parents chose partners that could give me the camaraderie of siblings I only dreamed of.
And I thought about how after two weeks travelling in the UK with Caroline, sharing beds, even sleeping together when separates were available, on our first night back home in our own beds, we both woke up startled and scared to not wake up next to the other; tapping the empty space where the other sister had been sleeping so soundly all those mornings before.
When I was eight, I gazed out onto a man made pond. I knew loneliness wouldn’t be forever. I knew friends could be your family, and I was just on the brink of a new reality where I’d contain multitudes.
I hope your chosen family feels like home, I hope if you have more than one family you find a way to embrace the ways you fit in there, I hope that when you need a miracle a new Shrek movie comes out, and I hope Elams if you ever need a sibling to step in that I am available, and that Scott you’re like a brother to me.
My family probably won’t star in a sitcom any time soon (although my dad and Dorothy did write a theme song for us when we all moved into our house together) but that’s okay. The Brady Bunch wasn’t even very funny and that girl the other day really, genuinely, thought I looked like Gwyneth Paltrow, all on her own.
New Year’s Resolutions:
smile with teeth in photos (we lost the plot in 2025 but we’re so back baby)
see more movies in theaters
don’t chase after anything that doesn’t want to be chased