Needing Each Other

When we moved, Stephen and I became each other’s only friend. Nothing brings two siblings together like not knowing anyone else, and living in the weirdest place ever. There were a couple of times we would look at each other during a party at someone’s house, and know that we were both thinking the same thing. Let’s get out of here! Life was too wierd, and it was so hard making new friends. We still managed to have the best times together, and even if the big Christmas party of the year was uncomfortable we would go grab Chinese and have our own party! We stood by each other through the long hard times, and encouraged each other during the process of making other friends. We both can rest in the assurance though, that no matter what, we will always be best friends.

We Know Each Other’s Hearts

“To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. “
- Clara Ortega

Memory # 4: Non-specificness

During the hardest time of my life, Stephen and I became extremely close. There were days when he would just hold me while I cried, and hold my hand in silence.  He was my avenger, he faced my own personal demons with me, and protected me as much as possible. There were days at work where the smallest thing would make me burst into tears. My brother would gladly cover my job and his while I ran to the bathroom to have a good cry and come back. He never complained, never acted irritated, and was always willing to do whatever it took to make me ok again. He listened even when I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and cheered me on even through the dark storm. Those times, while extremely hard and heartbreaking, I would not trade for the world. Those were the times that changed me, and that made us best friends. I will always love him for loving me, and standing beside me, and often in front of me, in the face of the storm.

From Enemies to Friends

(see the cute Scottish kids??? and Oh my word those are RED tights!)

“I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

~Maya Angelou

Memory # 3: From enemies to friends.

The gap that had closed in when we were younger split wide open at 9 and 14. Our worlds couldn’t have been further apart, and we couldn’t have spent less time together. I was upset because Stephen was grown up all of a sudden, and so we spent the next few years ignoring each other. Most of it was my fault, and I was the younger one, and our worlds were very different. When I was 14 and he was 19 we had a nice long talk, and I told him basically to stop being so nice to me. My main complaint was that I saw other brothers picking on their little sisters (lovingly) and I wanted that same treatment. My parents had done a good job of raising a gentleman and I decided it was my job to rough out some of those polished edges. He gladly obliged and promptly threw something at me. That was the turning point in our relationship. We were suddenly more than brother and sister, we were…friends?

The love of a brother

There’s no other love like the love for a brother. There’s no other love like the love from a brother.

~Astrid Alauda

Memory # 2: Summer memories.

Summers were the best when we were kids. The gap that had been so huge when we were very little got a little smaller when we were 7 and 12. Our summers were the best. We would play in the morning, eat lunch on the porch with mom, listen to mom read aloud to one of our summer books, and then go swimming for the rest of the afternoon. My favorite times were spent lying on the couch, while my mom read the Little House on the Prairie series, the Borrowers, and The Phantom Tollbooth to us. We would then take magnificent journeys to far off lands, over the seas, in our little pool. Stephen and I would drag the lawn chairs into the pool, “paddle off”, and make “watercrest” sandwhichs from the weeds around the pool.  The summer of the fires we couldn’t go outside and so my amazing mom let us play baseball in the house. Not with a real baseball, but a paper one, and our living room was perfectly shaped like a baseball diamond. It was also the summer Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled for home run history. Stephen was Mark McGwire and I was Sammy Sosa. We kept track of all of our “home runs” and had our own competition. We even insisted on keeping our “home run baseballs” like the real homerun hereos, something that I’m sure thrilled my mom much less than it did us.

My best friend and brother

My dearest brother-friend is gone on a missions trip, and I miss him so much! This week I will be doing a post everyday about a memory I have of him.

Memory #1

Stephen and I were 5 years apart. This gap was huge when we were very little, but around 4 and 9 things evened out. He was always willing to play dress up with me. He was the Robin Hood to my Maid Marion, the Prince Charming to my Princess (see above picture and feel free to say awww ), a fellow pirate, soldier, and traveler of the imagination. We had this favorite game where we were deep in a pit of…something, and we had to jump from object to object trying to stay afloat, while dodging insane creatures. We jumped around from couch to chairs, pretending that we were clinging to giant pickles, hot dogs, oreos, you name it. We were crazy kids, and we were so happy to be friends.

My Life (As I See It) Part 2

Towards the end of my last post I realized that there is actually a lot more to write
about than I realized! There were so many things that I had to leave out because
getting into them would just take too long, and I think that will definitely be the case
writing about these next few years. Here goes part two of…well, however many parts
this takes!

I remember the day I turned 11 very well. I was going to my best friend’s house to spend
the day, and as we drove up to their house all her siblings came running out yelling
that her poor goat had just died and please don’t come look! That day was full of fun,
but I had no clue what was really going on. Apparently a suprise birthday party had been
planned, but in keeping with my tradition of always finding out, it ended up not so much
as suprise. That year was filled with everything that was great about being a kid but
still growing up. Developing friendships, lazy summer days, and spitting watermelon seeds.

Me and Stephen with our grandparents circa 1998

During that summer though we received the sudden news that my Grandma (my mom’s mom) had died. It was completely unexpected and was very hard for me personally. She was a beautiful, kind person, and I loved her so much! (many more posts to come on that subject).

Basically 12 was just boring. My family and I can’t remember much of anything that happened (significantly that is) during that year. 12 was a significant year because that was my first time traveling to one of the most beautiful places on the planet…Texas. *Sigh* Texas is amazing.My best friend did get saved when we were twelve, so that was a great time! My Pappa got cancer during that year, and so my mom was gone a lot meaning I did a lot of growing up fast! Cooking, cleaning, and running a household.

My mom came home for my 13th birthday, but on my actual birthday we received the news my Pappa was doing a lot worse, so she made plans to leave Saturday morning before my birthday party. Thursday (my birthday) was filled with so many tears, and a ruined cake on top of everything! Saturday morning my mom came down with the stomach virus and couldn’t fly out. My 13th birthday (THE big birthday) party
was…well…to put it well, a flop. It was boring, no one talked, we all just sat around drinking lemonade. Woohoo. We left Sunday afternoon after getting a call from the family saying to come immediately. According to God’s perfect plan ( “his ways are not our ways…”) our car died two hours from the hospital, stranding us just far enough away to miss that final goodbye. I will never know why God chose to do that, but it was a peaceful time, when God’s presence was incredibly real to me. When I was 13 I made a commitment to God regarding my future life partner (more to come on that subject), and went to my first Prayer Advance. Oddly enough I met some people from a church that I would later join, but at the time it was a state away.

14 was my absolute favorite year. For my 14th birthday I got to do something I always wanted to do. See a real life dolphin up close. I actually got to pet it, feed it slimy dead fish (ew), and get a picture with it. It was a beautiful rainy day, and the park was practically deserted so we had the time of our lives! When I was 14 I also had the opportunity to start working with 5th and 6th grade girls, and found out I absolutely love it! They were so much fun and I came away with many “little sisters.” That summer I attended camp, but I went kicking and screaming (not literally). I didn’t really have a choice because my entire family was going and I couldn’t very well stay home all alone. Camp was…an experience. That is a whole series just by itself. Seriously. My loving best friend (knowing how shy I was) sent me a package on the LAST day of camp, meaning I had to sing a solo in front of the ENTIRE CAMP. She loved me that much. So much she only put pretzels in the package! (But I love pretzels so it was forgivable). That summer I sang a solo at the prayer advance with our youth choir (again oddly enough people from my new church have no memories of this event. That could be good or bad!) After that we (my family) took the longest vacation we had ever taken and went out West for 3 weeks. Highlights of the trip were going to Mexico, revisiting Texas (sigh), falling in love with San Diego, California, and making home movies in the car with my amazing brother.

To be continued…

My Life (as I see it) Part 1

I had planned to do this blog sometime near my birthday but that virus really wiped me out. I’ve been grilling my family (“what was I like at 5?”), looking through old pictures, and reading old diaries (yikes!). Here is my life, summed up, with some key moments and random memories.

 

They say you don’t really remember things until around 3 (right?) so those small person moments come from my family. Apparently when I was born everyone knew I was a girl because I came out screaming at the top of my lungs. My dad got to be there (he wasn’t allowed for Stephen), and so he went to church after I was born telling everyone he got to see my mom’s “guts.” She had a c-section with me because Stephen messed things up for me by being upside down! But I was born screaming and with a head full of black  dark hair. Stephen remembers being extremely mad at the doctors because they kept sticking me with needles (my blood sugar was low) and making me cry. My mom remembers listening to this screaming baby and making a comment about it to the nurse. The nurse leaned over and gleefully patted her on the arm saying “Honey, that one’s yours!”

My mom says Stephen loved squishing my cheeks because they were so puffy. I just found that out tonight and burst out laughing when my mom told me.

 

At 9 months I got the croup and spent 3 days in the hospital under a special kind of tent. I don’t remember any of this, but I’ve seen pictures and let me tell you I looked pretty puny. My dad says during those days he wondered what it would be like to lose a child. I obviously made it ok!

 

A few months after that my elbow popped out of socket. It was a signal of things to come, as this would happen again when I was three. I have vivid memories of standing on the hospital bed plastered to the wall screaming, trying to get away from the doctor. (I hated doctors). Thankfully I came away from both experiences with all my proper bones in their proper places and a really cute sling to use for dress-up.

My main memories from 3-5ish are of the great dane who lived in the house behind us. After a tornado ripped down the fence between our yards he would run into our house via our sliding glass door every time there was a thunderstorm. Great danes are supposed to be big and mean, but this one was a wimp. He would run into our house at the first drop of rain and refuse to leave until his owner came home hours later. He also ate crackers. My other big memory from that era was when we went on a hike and went wading in these natural springs. My mom stepped in some quicksand or something and sliced her ankle on something in the sand. We had to hike up many stairs and paths to get to the car, and take her to the ER. To this day her ankle is still not right. We never went wading there again! My mom also tells me that around that time she did my hair into my first ponytail. Big moment for a little girl huh? Big girl stuff, proud moments. I cried. Yup, cried. *Sigh* I was such a mournful little child.

We moved to an apartment when I was 6ish. (I say ish because I didn’t exactly keep a diary back then.) I LOVED our apartment. It was so cute, small, and we had our own little patio in the back with a tree growing right out of the cement. How cool is that when you’re 6?! I spent my days gathering roly-polies and putting them in the back of my tricycle. Shortly before we moved I began taking iron supplements. This doesn’t sound like a big whoop, but it is one of my major memories. Mainly because I hated taking vitamins and so I would suck on them. The problem? These were the size of a quarter and took hours to dissolve. I would sit there playing with my dolls and sucking on my vitamin all day long.

 

When I was almost seven a new family moved in next door. Like any nice family my mom and I went next door to say hello. I was wearing a nice headband my mom had made for me. Well, we ring the doorbell, door opens, we walk in and this humongous Labrador runs straight at me, leaps up, and grabs the headband RIGHT OFF MY HEAD! This was a common problem he had the lady explained and said she could only wear hair clips that matched her hair color. Well, this abnormally fearful child fell in love with this scary stupid dog, and I spent all my afternoons next door playing with the dog and the lady. Those were some awesome days!

We moved to our last house when I was about to turn 8. For my eight birthday party we invited every single girl in the church over. (Thankfully it was only around 30). I think it was a clever tactic from my parents to try to get me more interested in girly things and less into climbing trees and playing with the boys. I took art classes over the summers, and absolutely LOVED them. One of my friends took them also and she ended up a painter, and I a photographer. Hmmm… Those summers were the best. My mom, brother and I spent a huge amount of time with that same painter friend and her mom. We took art classes, went to Taco Tuesdays, made pantyhose dolls, swam all afternoon, and then watched movies. The three of us kids also formed a detective agency and learned all sorts of secret signals, only we could never remember them so we’d end up dying laughing and asking “when you scratch your nose it means look behind you or tie your shoe?!” We also dressed up in “disguises” and followed strangers around in Publix. Our disguises? Well, they included a tacky tourist, a baseball player, maids, and…fat people. Yup. Stephen and Katie (I didn’t participate this time) stuffed pillows in their clothes and walked around in public. Where people could see them.

When I was 10 I got my ears pierced. Big day! We waited F-O-R-E-V-E-R. During which time my grandma got the hiccups. So my Pappa goes up to her from behind and goes “here, this will help” and promptly pulls a huge chunk of her hair while simultaneously smacking her upside the head. She turned around, smacked him and asked what did he do that for?! He said it would help her forget her hiccups. (I don’t think she appreciated the gesture). After we finally got in my Pappa walks up to the counter and says he would like his tongue pierced! The lady was happy to oblige him but I don’t think my grandma would have let him! I also got glasses, and chopped off all my hair when I was 10. It was a bigggg year for changes! I also won the Grand Prix at our church. It’s a car race with these little wooden cars that run on a little track. My dad made my car at the last minute, and well, as much as I love my dad it looked…horrible. Even he admitted it. But I brought my little car to the competition, and tried to ignore everyone’s jokes about how it looked like termites had gnawed on it for awhile. Well, the first round of races started and my car was SUPER FAST. For real! It skunked every single car out there and no one could believe that this horrible looking, slapped together car was beating theirs! I won first place that year and was extremely proud of my dad. (on a side note he made next year’s car too and the wheels fell off halfway down the track…and never made it to the end)

To be continued…