Siblings

I've done a lot of thinking about how important siblings are recently. (Before I go any further and really offend people I must admit that I know not every family is going to have multiple children. Shoot, we aren't having any! I'm just appreciating my particular life arrangement. This is in no way a plea for my brother or sister to have a little baby girl for me to spoil, though I wouldn't object. You two can thank Heidi for pacifying that wish of mine!) Then I saw this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/bruni-the-gift-of-siblings.html?smid=pl-share and realized that I wasn't the only one.

I'm fortunate to have three siblings. If you asked me when I was younger if I felt "fortunate" to have all of my siblings I can guarantee I would have said, "I am the only child of my real parents. I was simply switched at birth." I am not kidding. I seriously thought I wasn't actually my parents' child for YEARS. My mom would swear that she saw me being delivered and I'd say there must have been another baby born then too and we got mixed up. I'm not sure when I gave up that campaign, but it certainly drove my mom nuts until I did. Anyway, I have two half-brothers and a "full" sister (that's how I described her when I was younger and didn't understand why, if she wasn't a half, I didn't need to indicate that by calling her a whole or full sister. It makes me chuckle now.) and they’re all older than me. (If I was switched, at least I got to go home to a family where I was the baby. I cannot imagine being the big sister. Ugh.) Anyway, my brothers Aaron (almost 11 years my senior) and Brian (almost 9 years older than me) are my dad's from his first marriage and therefore technically my half-brothers. (I never thought of them that way, but they're close enough to my mom in age that it sometimes took explaining that she didn't birth Aaron when she 14! :) My dad is about ten years older than my mom so that always helped things make a little more sense.) My dad went from having two boys in a row to having two girls in a row as my sister Kylie (a little over 2 years older than me) and I were born shortly after he married my mom.

Now, don't get me wrong, my sister and I didn't get along when we were growing up. In fact we were more like oil and water, cats and dogs, cinnamon and I...you get the point. I've never quite figured out why (other than she picked on me incessantly for being fat. She'll deny that, by the way. That's ok. I've gotten over it with only a few counseling sessions. I joke. I joke.). It finally came to me the other day that it was because we're darn near polar opposites. She is an outstanding mother and longed for Alex far before he was born. She always wanted to be a mom. I'll never be a mother and that's my wish. I don't remember ever wanting a child of my own. She hates change and has deemed Indianapolis as too big of a city to live in. I thrive on change and often think that Indianapolis is too small of a city to live in. She's deathly afraid of clowns. (Ok, I don't really have an opposite to that it is just one of my favorite facts about her.) I could go on with our differences, but I think you get the point now.

A few months ago Jackson and I went to dinner with Kylie and her husband, Nick. I figured out that though we're still really different, that doesn't matter anymore. What we have in common far outweighs what we don't. We both love our parents fiercely. We both miss our Grams with the same fierceness. We both love Alex with all of our hearts. She and I have history (even if she cannot always remember because that is another difference we have, I have the memory- and come to think of it body build- of an elephant and she has the memory of an ant). At our dinner she was spunky, funny and genuine. We had a great dinner with them. It finally showed me that all of those people who told us, "you'll love your sister when you get older," were right. I do. And maybe her giving me a hard time growing up prepared me more for the real world than I ever thought it would.

My brothers are a different story. Since they were so much older than me it did not take me any time at all to think they were awesome. I idolized Brian from the start. He was born with spina bifida and was in a wheelchair or on crutches his entire life. That didn't matter to me. He was awesome. I remember him putting me on his lap and taking me on ride down our steep driveway on his wheelchair. It was so fun. He got to watch MTV way before Kylie and I did so we'd sneak in and watch with him. Hearing Metallica's "Enter Sandman" will always remind me of the time that he let Kylie and me watch that scary music video. We both had nightmares and he got in trouble for it. He didn't care, though. He was just cool like that. He was very social and quite popular in high school. He used to get to go to the mall with his friends on Friday nights which was just the coolest thing ever in my mind. He could lift really heavy weights and do handstand push-ups. (I've tried. I still cannot do those darn push-ups that way.) He never made me feel like I was bothering him even though looking back I probably was. I remember being on crutches after a knee surgery a few years ago and sending him a note about how much more I admired him after that experience. I was awful at doing the most basic things that he made look simple. He wrote back and was upset for me that I was hurt. He didn't say "yeah, it sucks." or "welcome to my world." Nope. He just wanted me to heal up. I'll never forget that. He just did not feel bad for himself. He taught me so much about being thankful for what we've been given and about how to help others. He made my heart extra loving towards people with disabilities and I am a better person for getting to be his sister. While he's sadly been deceased for a little over two years now, not many days pass where I don't think of him. He was certainly on my mind during the mini marathon a few weeks ago. I could almost feel him rooting for Aaron and me. (Judging by our finishing times he must have been pulling a lot harder for Aaron- ha!)

Aaron doesn't look older than me even though he'll be 40 in August. It just isn't right. He found a fountain of youth and won't give anyone else the location. Ok, maybe it is the really, really fast running he does everyday. Or his super clean diet. Anyway, he is an inspiration for me for sure. Aaron is seriously the best dad to my nephew Justin. I am so, so proud of what a wonderful parent he is. He works hard and has a lot of fun. He is one of the most cleanly men I've ever met. His car would make mine look messy and that's saying something because I keep mine as tidy as possible at all times. (He really needs to pass this trait on to Jackson who doesn't grasp why leaving empty Diet Coke cans and old receipts in his car is so gross. Ha!) Anyway, Aaron is so supportive of his family members and would make a great husband for some lucky girl if he'd ever settle down. (End of hint.) He has been such a good big brother to all of us and I love him for it.

I've been working on this post for a couple of days and while I was writing it I got the news that my sister is having to undergo some pretty serious surgery next Friday. She's asked that I not get into specifics so I won't, but God knows what is going on so please pray for her and He'll understand. Thinking of my sister, the girl who blazed the trail for me in life, having this kind of surgery breaks my heart. I started thinking of everything she had to do first that made my life easier and came up with quite a few things. She got braces first. Neither of us liked wearing our headgear. She did wear hers, though. I....didn't. (Sorry, Mom.) She always had to start new schools before me so she could tell me how things worked (she was in middle school and high school for two years each before I got there. You learn a lot of tricks for "survival" in two years!). She learned to drive first and seeing her learn made it easier for me when it was my turn. She went to college first and my mom had no idea what she really needed for the first year. By the time I went to college mom was an old pro and there were no issues. I took as many college classes as I could in high school because she didn't and wished she had. I finished my degree in three years because of that advice and saved a ton of money. She bought a house and decided not to move back to Grant County after college first (I knew she was wise!). That made it much easier for me to do the same. I know there are more examples, but it really hit me that she always had to go first whether she liked it or not. I never heard her complain about it either. It wasn't until I was getting married before her that she complained about not being first! I honestly think it may have been the only time that I'd be leading the maiden voyage. (It wasn't long after that she met Nick and the rest is history.) And now she unfortunately has to go down this scary medical road first. I'll be cheering and praying for her, though because that's just what siblings do.