SIBS

OCTOBER 16, 2024 – This morning I completed the second of two remote, hours-long sessions with a researcher at the University of Minnesota. Our family had been recruited some 25 years ago to participate in the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (“SIBS”) of adoptive and non-adoptive families undertaken by the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research at the University of Minnesota. My wife and one of our two sons and I have volunteered to participate in the current follow-up portion of the study.

For three hours last Monday, I took a series of what amounted to memory and IQ tests. I hadn’t been subjected to such intense cognitive examination since my school days. The tests—routine, I’m sure in the world of behavioral science—were fascinating. Some parts were fun and amusing; a few were especially challenging; others, rewarding. At an earlier age I would’ve been anxious about my score, but at the end of Monday’s tests, I simply felt relief. Though an old competitive streak from my youth heightened my alertness, I had surprisingly little interest in how I might’ve scored. The days when it would’ve mattered have grown quite small in the rearview mirror. I felt as though I’d finished an unusually punishing but rewarding workout as opposed to a track competition in front of thousands of spectators, with my time and place—good or bad—in each event lighting up the jumbotron. I later told my wife about the tests. Since she has yet to be interviewed, I proposed that for good money, I could give her good testing strategies. She wasn’t buying.

Today’s two-and-a-half-hour session consisted of a series of interview questions about my relationships with my parents, followed by five story-telling exercises, wherein I was presented with a topic and three sets of word lists and instructed to tell a story extemporaneously. I’d rather not tell any stories about my story-telling and just be brutally honest: If I were grading myself, I would place an extra-long MINUS sign in front of the (bad) letter grade and write under it, “What happened?!” The relationship stuff was exceptionally detailed and required considerable recollection and reflection.

My age and abiding love, respect and gratitude for my parents worked like honey drizzled liberally over memories of my childhood. Swept away was the chronic pain and suffering I’d experienced over the violin and my parents’ relentless nagging and perpetual demands to practice. (My sisters were of quite a different mold in this regard. No one ever had to get them to practice.) As bad as the violin business was, church and Sunday school attendance were nearly as bad. They were also the exclusive domain of my mother—until she finally succeeded in dragging Dad to church, whereupon he joined forces with Mother. In today’s honey-coated reminiscences, however, my battles over church/Sunday school attendance were wholly forgotten. The violin wars, on the other hand, yielded to a miraculous “win-win” when at 14, I finally “got religion” about music and playing the violin. Once I was a “born again” violinist, there was no stopping me—much to my parents’ astonishment.

On balance, today’s interview allowed me to express unqualified gratitude for my parents and their examples. Many influences have shaped the map of my life, but today as I was asked for details about my parents, I realized how their consistent persistent loving caring nurturing reliable examples provided a positive direction for me and each of my three sisters. Little more could be expected of parents than what our parents did for each of us.

When the researcher asked what traits I hoped were instilled in sons Cory and Byron, I found myself describing my parents’ attributes.

Yet to be completed before I’m awarded my modest stipend—which remuneration I’d forgotten about until the researcher reminded me—is a 90-minute to two-hour in-person interview on campus a week from next Tuesday. I don’t know if our family will be asked to participate in a third round to the study, but in my case, anyway, it should be scheduled before another 25 years roll by.

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson