Day 11 - Your siblings, in great detail
I predict that this is going to be another long one:
Growing up, I was very close to my siblings. We had inside jokes, we spent time together, and there were so many things that only they could understand, because they were the only ones sharing my experiences-have disabled siblings, not having a TV, being bounced around from house to house, and being weird smart kids in a normal town.
My older younger brother, Anthony, is both my closest sibling and the one I am least like. He is a year and 10 months younger than I am, two years behind me in school, and although in some cases that kind of proximity means resentment, in our case it made us extremely close. We never had a lot of sibling rivalry. We knew we were about equally smart, and we wanted different things. Anthony was always the “normal” one, competing for Student Council, Student of the Month-I was the weird one, and although he was not nearly as embarrassed by me as he could have been, we didn’t tend to run in the same circles.
When we were in middle school, we started speaking Pig Latin. I’m not sure what started it, although I’m sure part of it was to hide things from Timothy, but between he and I we spoke Pig Latin ALL the time. We spoke it until we could think in it, until it was second nature, and there were people who overheard us and really thought we were speaking a foreign language. I still speak Pig Latin pretty well, but now it tends to get garbled up with Spanish, so you’d have to be multi-lingual to follow anything I might want to say.
Now Anthony is successful, has made a surprising career with a bachelor’s in psychiatry, and is moving on after a fairly sad divorce. Of all my siblings, he is most likely to produce 2.5 kids and a picket fence, and with his new girlfriend I think that may be on the way.
My younger younger brother, Timothy, has always been the baby. He was only 2 when my sister was born, so he has never really known life without a disabled sibling, and while I was trying to shield Anthony and Timothy from problems, Anthony was trying to shield Timothy; between us, I think we were moderately successful.
Tim is 5 years younger than I am, and although I knew him as a brother, it took longer for me to know him as a person. He was a quiet kid, extremely geeky, into gaming and computers. By his eighth grade year, I wasn’t living at home, so I have seen him grow only in fits and starts. While I managed to see some of Anthony’s school plays, etc, during his high school years, I think the only time I saw Tim was in an eighth grade performance of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
Tim has never talked much. He went through some pretty bad times in high school, but rarely talked about them. He was home alone with my parents for years after my brother and I left, taking over the upstairs and turning them into a venue for his LAN parties. At some point in college, when I was home for the summer, I realized that somehow Tim and I had grown up to be similar-we are definitely the freaky, geeky, side of the family, although he’s more gamer and I’m more science fiction. I still don’t talk to him much; getting him to communicate is still like pulling teeth, but I proofread his stories sometimes and love hanging out with him when I can. He has an awesome, mostly deaf wife and a thundering herd of cats in a dubious area of Denver, and last year he sold enough stories to make the equivalent of one hour’s pay at the copy center where he works.
My sister Katie is … complicated. I have been known to write 100 page autobiographies basically all about her. She was born when I was 7 years old. She didn’t have a mouth. She still doesn’t. They can’t fix it. She does not live in pain; in fact she is very happy. She is 24. No one ever thought she’d live this long, so the prognosis is unknown. She speaks sign language-very limited. She seems to be able to say whatever she wants, most of the time. My brothers and some other people take care of her in turns with my parents. We don’t know what will happen with my parents get too old to take care of her.
My youngest sister, Rebecca, is dead. She was also born without a mouth, but apparently didn’t adapt to it as well, because she died when she was six months old. She is buried in my hometown, where we all leave flowers when we pass through, although that isn’t often.
Little known fact: After my father had worked at K-mart for several years, my brothers and I cleverly noticed that our initials spelled “K-mat”. We were allowed to name our youngest sister, and a major criteria was that her name had to begin with an “R.”
Growing up, I was very close to my siblings. We had inside jokes, we spent time together, and there were so many things that only they could understand, because they were the only ones sharing my experiences-have disabled siblings, not having a TV, being bounced around from house to house, and being weird smart kids in a normal town.
My older younger brother, Anthony, is both my closest sibling and the one I am least like. He is a year and 10 months younger than I am, two years behind me in school, and although in some cases that kind of proximity means resentment, in our case it made us extremely close. We never had a lot of sibling rivalry. We knew we were about equally smart, and we wanted different things. Anthony was always the “normal” one, competing for Student Council, Student of the Month-I was the weird one, and although he was not nearly as embarrassed by me as he could have been, we didn’t tend to run in the same circles.
When we were in middle school, we started speaking Pig Latin. I’m not sure what started it, although I’m sure part of it was to hide things from Timothy, but between he and I we spoke Pig Latin ALL the time. We spoke it until we could think in it, until it was second nature, and there were people who overheard us and really thought we were speaking a foreign language. I still speak Pig Latin pretty well, but now it tends to get garbled up with Spanish, so you’d have to be multi-lingual to follow anything I might want to say.
Now Anthony is successful, has made a surprising career with a bachelor’s in psychiatry, and is moving on after a fairly sad divorce. Of all my siblings, he is most likely to produce 2.5 kids and a picket fence, and with his new girlfriend I think that may be on the way.
My younger younger brother, Timothy, has always been the baby. He was only 2 when my sister was born, so he has never really known life without a disabled sibling, and while I was trying to shield Anthony and Timothy from problems, Anthony was trying to shield Timothy; between us, I think we were moderately successful.
Tim is 5 years younger than I am, and although I knew him as a brother, it took longer for me to know him as a person. He was a quiet kid, extremely geeky, into gaming and computers. By his eighth grade year, I wasn’t living at home, so I have seen him grow only in fits and starts. While I managed to see some of Anthony’s school plays, etc, during his high school years, I think the only time I saw Tim was in an eighth grade performance of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
Tim has never talked much. He went through some pretty bad times in high school, but rarely talked about them. He was home alone with my parents for years after my brother and I left, taking over the upstairs and turning them into a venue for his LAN parties. At some point in college, when I was home for the summer, I realized that somehow Tim and I had grown up to be similar-we are definitely the freaky, geeky, side of the family, although he’s more gamer and I’m more science fiction. I still don’t talk to him much; getting him to communicate is still like pulling teeth, but I proofread his stories sometimes and love hanging out with him when I can. He has an awesome, mostly deaf wife and a thundering herd of cats in a dubious area of Denver, and last year he sold enough stories to make the equivalent of one hour’s pay at the copy center where he works.
My sister Katie is … complicated. I have been known to write 100 page autobiographies basically all about her. She was born when I was 7 years old. She didn’t have a mouth. She still doesn’t. They can’t fix it. She does not live in pain; in fact she is very happy. She is 24. No one ever thought she’d live this long, so the prognosis is unknown. She speaks sign language-very limited. She seems to be able to say whatever she wants, most of the time. My brothers and some other people take care of her in turns with my parents. We don’t know what will happen with my parents get too old to take care of her.
My youngest sister, Rebecca, is dead. She was also born without a mouth, but apparently didn’t adapt to it as well, because she died when she was six months old. She is buried in my hometown, where we all leave flowers when we pass through, although that isn’t often.
Little known fact: After my father had worked at K-mart for several years, my brothers and I cleverly noticed that our initials spelled “K-mat”. We were allowed to name our youngest sister, and a major criteria was that her name had to begin with an “R.”