When I think of my little brother, I tear up.

He gets me. He always has. No questions asked. I’ve never had to justify my existence to him. Ever. He loves me unconditionally. Always.

To have someone who’s always on your side like that, well I struggle to find the words.

Tracy and I knew each other before this life. We chose each other as brother and sister–so we could grow up together, protecting each other. We were friends before we were born. We can sit in silence and gain positive energy from each other just by being. We can read each other’s thoughts. I’m terrified of this world without him in it. But it has not always been this way.

He was my baby brother, too cute for words when he was small. We all doted over him. But he grew up to be a cheeky monkey as all little brothers do. We would fight like regular siblings. It was me and my sister ganging up on him or he and I ganging up on her or them ganging up on me. Just regular kid stuff.

He is four years my junior and I don’t remember ever sharing a school with him. We must have overlapped in elementary school but I don’t recall those days or years. I wonder if he does?

Once on a snowy morning, before he was old enough for school, he got dressed in all his snow gear and walked my sister and me to the bus stop a few houses away. He had strict instructions to go straight back home after the bus came. As our bus pulled away, I watched him as he turned around and started walking up the sidewalk. He slipped and fell backwards and then he was out of sight. My heart broke. I remember thinking if I should ask the bus driver to stop so I could run and check on him. I was worried about him all day long wondering if he got up and made it home. I had visions of him lying there crying and calling out my name. After school, the bus dropped me off and I ran home to check on him. He didn’t even remember falling. All that worry for nothing.

When he was about three-years-old he had a favorite outfit he wore all the time. It was an orange t-shirt with a Hawaiian girl in a grass skirt doing the hula and red, white and blue striped pants. He used to say the girl on his shirt was his girlfriend and of course that made us laugh so we asked him all the time who she was.

I remember Tracy going from irresistibly cute, to undeniably annoying, to downright mean[1]. We finally found our common ground after high school but it wasn’t until I returned home from my L.A. adventure that we became inseparable. Tracy and I were the only kids living at home, we went to the same University and worked together too.

Tracy had a big monster truck that we drove around in. It makes me laugh to think about it. If he saw a cute girl at a red light, he made me duck down, and I did. It was a time when we were learning about ourselves. Trying to figure out our own life’s pathway. Hashing out who were we now and what were we going to be.

This time together was a blessing. We had always been close but this just brought us closer. Marriages, kids and schooling sent us in different directions but we’ve always remained close. We live exactly 8,454 miles apart, but when we get together we pick up right where we left off. These days I only get to see him and his family every few years when I fly home.

My brother has a busy life. A big job at the hospital in charge of many. He has five kids. The oldest just got married last week and the youngest only starting school and his second son is currently serving a mission in South America. My brother magnifies his church callings and is a health freak running marathons, relays and triathlons. He hikes up snowy mountains and skis down them and he’s backpacked into the Grand Canyon more than once. When he comes home from work he falls asleep in his recliner while his sweet wife makes dinner…just like our dad used to do when we were little but I think my brother was too small to remember that. (Secretly I’m very pleased my husband has not adopted this behavior.)

I can not be prouder of my little brother and his life achievements. He’s the guy that’s loved by all. His sweet wife, his kids, extended family, in-laws, his employees, as well as his church family. Like I said, I tear up when I think about him and I am so proud to be his big sister.

I love you, Tracy, thank you for always been there for me. I can’t count how many times you’ve literally dropped whatever you are doing to help me out. You make this world a better place just by being you. Thanks for adding so much to my life♥♥♥

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[1] He was mean to me when I made the decision to go to Skyline High School.  Following my older brother’s lead, Tracy spent many days calling me a traitor as I yelled back “Shut Up!” and then he went to Skyline, giving me the last laugh.

Growing up, my siblings were my only real friends, especially my two youngest.

There is a four-year gap between my older brother and I. The biggest gap between all us kids. This gap gave a natural break between the big kids and little kids and that’s how “The three little kids” saying was born. When I was little it didn’t matter because I didn’t realize what those words meant but the older I got the more I desperately tried to make the switch.

One day I made a pronouncement at Family Home Evening,

            “Ok everyone, you know how it’s the three little kids, well now that I’m older I think it should be the three big kids and the two little kids.”

I was laughed at…they said it was cute but I didn’t want to be cute. I was serious. And as much as I tried to swing that shift, I was the only one voting and “the three little kids” stuck…forever. It didn’t matter how old we got, we were still known as the three little kids. Today it’s a title I wear proudly.

My Little Sister

I was cut off from my mother’s breasts when my sister was born. I was too little to remember but I’m sure it had some impact on our relationship. We are only sixteen months apart. I have no recollection of my time without her, she’s always been there.

It’s the summer of 1977 and we just got our new bunk beds. My dad bought two sets of old metal army bunks; spray-painted one blue and the other pink. We couldn’t wait for the paint to dry.

My mom and us three little kids, were across the street at the neighbor’s house, playing with their kids while the moms sat and chatted in the driveway. My mother was not comfortable with the social aspect of chatting. She was an introvert and still is. My father was an introvert too. The sun was shining down and there was laughter in the air when my mother announced, Well it’s time for bed. I’m not sure if this was her way of politely excusing herself from the social chat but we started to chime together our protest about bedtime but we remembered this was the night we got to finally sleep in our new beds. So our protest came out in cheers of excitement and happiness. Jeanie, our neighbor, pulled the funniest face while she asked my mom how she got us to be excited about going to bed.

I had the top as I was the oldest. We were so excited that it took us ages to fall asleep. My sister and I made up a game. I would slide my arm down between the wall and the top bed and sweep it along the wall like a pendulum and my sister’s job was to try to catch my hand. We laughed and played this game for years. We even had a song we made up to go with the game.

When we were young, our mother made incredible cakes–edible art. Our favorite was a carousel cake. It was beautiful with different colored frosting horses iced to bright colored straws with a big top tent on top she made from a paper plate. My sister had a frosting collection under her bed that she would share with me sometimes. Once she let me eat a carousel horse, which was very special.

My early days before school were bliss and my sister, brother and I would spend hours together making up games, spending whole days in our pajamas listening to the Mary Poppins album over and over until it wouldn’t play anymore. We had each other and that was enough.

My sister was my best friend, the one who always went along with my hare-brained ideas and would take my side when it came to fighting with my other siblings. We had each other’s back always until one day the light behind her eyes just vanished. Something was different. We were different. She was different. After that, we argued all the time, fought over toys and hated sharing a room. Once we divided the room in half but that didn’t work as the door was on her side of the room and I couldn’t jump far enough to get to my side of the room without touching her floor and mom put a stop to the dividing the room idea when the fights turned into slaps. We only saw the idea on Brady Bunch.

Brady Bunch Photos by 3219a2.medialib.glogster.com and www.sitcomsonline.com

She moved into her own room when I was ten. It wasn’t until her early teens when things really stood out of how different she was and it wasn’t until her twenties when she was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, the same thing dad had.

We went to different Jr high schools but in high school, we shared a year. She was a sophomore and I was a senior, a crossover year for us. I tried to rekindle what we once had but each time I got close she would bite. I always thought it was me, something I was not doing right, so I tried harder to get close to her again. I never gave up on her. It was hard because I always needed time to nurse the bruises she gave me and her nursing the ones I gave her. We did more damage than good.

The truth is none of us knew what she needed especially her. The adults had no clue. She was told to “make friends, join school clubs, don’t be so shy” but when she did try to assert herself she was shut down for that too. Nobody knew what to do. She was smart, really smart but she was flunking out of school. Her battle within just couldn’t cope.

None of us had it easy but out of all of us, her mental illness is most pronounced. Like my dad, she is not always easy to love but I know she doesn’t mean to be that person. All of us at different times have been her targets. Her daggers hurt. She knows how to cut deep. Forgiveness and love are the only way to survive having her as a sister.

Since moving to Australia, I watch her struggle from afar and I’m less of a target. She’s hurt me to my bare emotional core yet I still love her and will never forget that little girl who I laughed with and shared her frosting collection with me.

♥♥♥

I don’t have memories of my little brother coming home from the hospital and getting to hold him, but I do remember having to stay with my Aunt and Uncle when my mother was in the hospital. Since there were so many of us kids, we all got farmed out to different places. Dumping us on one house “would have been too much”, mom said “and you need to wear a diaper at night. I know you’re a big girl and you don’t have any accidents, it’s just so your Aunt won’t have to worry.” I remember waking up and telling them every morning (for the 3 or 4 nights I was there) that my diaper was dry as I was a big girl. It was important to show I was right about something. I was three.

My Aunt taught me how to write my name and for every letter I wrote a page of, she gave me a chocolate chip. I loved it.

Stayed tuned next week for part 3…My Tracy.

 

Family is the reason.

I did not grow up in the Brady Bunch household. We saw things kids shouldn’t see and experienced things kids shouldn’t experience. But if I reflect on my childhood, big giant gaping holes would be lost if any of us were missing.

Everyone in my family has driven me crazy, took me to boiling point and brought me to tears, lots of times. I’m sure I uttered  (or yelled most likely) “I WISH I WERE IN A DIFFERENT FAMILY! As I was 100% sure that I had been adopted. But the truth, is they all mean a great deal to me including their human flaws.

I found this cute video about family…Ok, it’s a little cheesy because its made for teenagers but its playful, beautiful and the words hit home. A family is all about the little things.

My older brother

I remember when I was about six, I found a spider in the bedroom I shared with my little sister. Terrified I ran out of there right quick crying bloody murder (I had a set of lungs on me).  By the time I got out of my room, I wasn’t crying about the spider anymore. My Tall Grandma (I had a Short Grandma too) had been on a visit to Holland weeks before and she bought me a sweet little doll with wooden shoes. I was crying frightened that the spider would eat her and I couldn’t save her because I couldn’t touch the floor. Nothing would calm me down. That was until my big brother, asked if I wanted him to crab walk me into the room to save her. I stopped crying.

“What’s a crab walk?” I asked.

He showed me and before I knew it, I was being very brave while my brother ‘crab walked’ me on his stomach into my room to save my new dolly and her wooden shoes. I was very happy to sit there as he struggled to crab walk me. As long as I didn’t have to touch the same floor as the spider, all was well. I can still hear his grunts and heavy breathing as he struggled under my weight but I was safe in my older brother’s care. If I was six, he must have been eleven.

He didn’t have to do that. He could have just went about his day paying no attention to his blubbering little sister crying about a spider and a dolly. He could have offered to get the doll for me but instead, he gave me so much more. He was a loving brother who crab walked his petrified sister into confidence and valor, he showed me that love prevails. He showed me the love he had for his crying little sister and forty plus years on, I’ve not forgotten.

I always thought heaven dealt my older brother an ordinary hand but when I truly saw my brother for his heavenly gifts, he was anything but ordinary.

My big brother was not perfect, he was a right pain in my butt for most of my childhood. He teased me to tears almost daily, stole my babysitting money and ate Easter & Christmas chocolates but he showed me what unconditional love was.

He was different than the other kids. He struggled to learn the basics in school and never really learned how to read. I watched him get bullied his whole life. From school kids to church kids and even watched our own father give him a hard time, but he endured. He always offered forgiveness to his perpetrators in heartbeat. He never held any animosity and loved others unconditionally even when they hurt him. He was a guy that needed to be loved no matter what the cost. He never held a grudge and he’s the same way today.

He has the biggest but the most wounded heart. He’s been on heart medication for years, he got a pacemaker put in when he was in his early forties. He’s woken up many a night to his defibrillator shocking his heart back to life while he sleeps. He is the glue of his sweet family. Without him, his daughters and son would be lost. His grandkids would be lost. I never thought I would see him as a loving father let alone grandfather. Each day he is with us it’s a blessing. I’ve always felt he’s on borrowed time.

My older sister

My sister is the oldest of us all and I idolized her. No, I really did. She was pretty, popular, funny and cool. She was everything I wanted to be. Out of all of us kids, my mom said we look the most alike. My mom labeled our baby photos to tell them apart. This secretly made me smile. I would follow my sister around the house doing everything that she did. She hated it. I would of too if I was the older sister. But I couldn’t help it. I learned so much from her just by her everyday example.

(Photo of us to be inserted here when I locate it…TBA)

She let me hang out with her friends when they came over until I got kicked out of the room but what they said was so funny. I loved being a fly on the wall. Once she even took me to see “The Empire Strikes Back” when I was nine, I felt so cool.

Vent brushes, big perms, girls camp, short shorts, tube tops, croutons made out of toast, backyard picnics, bike riding on a horse named Flicka, Star Wars, Valley Jr High, Tight jeans (how many stories?), kittens buried in our backyard, The Butternut Tree, The red purse, showing us the glow-in-the-dark ghost from the top of your lip balm, teaching me  “Shoe fly, don’t bother me”, giving me the keys to your car after I came home with my license, sneaking into your attic room to play with your barbies, wearing your paten leather red boots and sipping up my skin in them, watching dad slap you across the face when you were defiending your little brothers and sisters. 

There are several everlasting memories I have of my sister. I want to thank her for being my older sister, my second mom. I remember once when I was a teenager, my mom and stepdad went away for the weekend. I snuck out my bedroom window while my sister was looking after us. She was in the kitchen when I snuck back in at 3am. Ashamed and shocked I stood there looking at her in her pajamas. I thought she was going to yell, get mad and tell mom. She did none of those things. She was cool, calm and ask where I had been. I made a choice not to lie.

“I snuck out my window and met up with some friends.”

“I saw that, are they good friends?”

“Yea.”

“Friends that won’t lead you astray?”

“Yea, I think so.”

“Well good. You better get some sleep or you’ll miss church in the morning.”

I went to bed thinking about what she had said. Where they good friends not leading me astray? I was not sure about the answer that night but it made me question my friendships in the future.

I observed my sister take what she wanted out of life with both hands. She was a great dancer and enjoyed drama class always trying out for the school plays and mostly getting the lead roles. I would watch her from the audience sitting on my knees, chin stretched out so I could see her way up on the stage. No one was more proud of her than I, see I really did idolize her.

Suddenly, in her last year of high school, she fell pregnant with my niece. I became an aunt at twelve. She was the best mother I had ever seen and still is (and even a better grandmother). She had two more babies over the years, my nephews (the youngest is still on his mission) and I loved playing with them all. I learned how to be a mother by watching her.

I watched her study hard and become an LPN then further her degree to become a Registered Nurse. She taught me all about feminism. Bringing home what she learned in her women’s studies class. She could do anything and she was good at everything. I was proud of my sister and all the hard work she was putting into her life. Being a great mother was most important to her. Like I said I learned so much from her just by her everyday example.

This is part one of my family post…Stay tuned for part 2 next week.

Feature photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash