A tribute to Brothers.

I'm seventeen years old, and my brother is nearing thirteen. We are four years apart, and of the opposite gender; yet, we are so close it's almost impossible to describe. I can think something, and he'll understand. For example, if someone asks me a question that I don't want to answer, or that I don't know how to answer, he can understand what I'm thinking, and how I'm feeling. It goes both ways, too; he's really shy, so whenever he doesn't speak up to say something, I can talk for him, confident that I know what he really wants to say. I don't think I've ever been wrong before, when it comes to telling what he's thinking.

How is it possible that we can be this close? How is it possible for a sister and a brother to rarely fight, to be interested in the same things, and to know exactly how to console each other? I'll tell you. Beware, this could turn out to be quite a long post.

When I was just over four years old, I saw my baby brother for the first time. My first thoughts consisted of wishing I had a sister instead of a brother, but those soon went away. I can remember him opening his eyes and looking at me; I know that babies don't understand what they're looking at when they first open their eyes, and I know that when they smile it means that most-likely their muscles are just reacting to some movement they're making, but he smiled at me. He had blue eyes, as most infants do; he also had the tiniest hands, feet, and ears that I'd ever seen before. And it hit me, when I was four years old, that I was no longer going to be the center of attention.

I was very correct. As soon as they brought my brother home from the hospital, relatives and friends would all crowd around the new baby and fuss over him, while I sat down and was perfectly ignored. Not intentionally, of course; but I was ignored nonetheless.

When I was about six, my father started driving trucks for a living; it was horrible, and I hated it. I would see him about every two months, as he was doing long-haul driving. Even then, he would only stay a couple days; then he would be on his way again, leaving me behind and feeling like I'd been abandoned. My brother, while he was the cutest little boy I'd ever seen, had taken away my mom; and now my father had just left me to be alone.

We moved to Oregon when I was seven. My brother wasn't three yet, and we moved on my mom's birthday. It was cold inside the bus we rode on to get up there, because they had the air conditioning on. I remember that I fell asleep on the bus, only to wake up and realize that I'd just missed breakfast, and there was nothing for me to eat until we stopped again. I think it was then that I started to grow up a little.

The bus stopped in Portland and we got off, only to find out that we didn't know where we were going. Details are fuzzy to me now, because that experience wasn't vital for me to remember, but I can remember being cold and tired. It seemed like forever until we were able to find our apartment.

I can remember that apartment very well. I can also remember the times that we had in it, very well. My mom was constantly sick, and alongside always being sick, she had clinical depression. I still don't understand what that is, because I'm a firm believer in the fact that your brain can control how healthy you are, and you can convince yourself to be depressed or happy. Anyway, she was always sick and sad; and let me tell you, it was a nightmare to live with that.

My brother and I always clinged to each other after my dad had started working long-haul, so we were already close before we moved to Oregon; but seeing as how he was nearing the age of three and I had just turned seven, we didn't know how to do a lot of things. Boy, we learned everything; we cleaned everything, we took care of everything, and we dealt with a mother who cried and yelled all of the time, because she wasn't happy with her life. If we didn't do something right, which happened often considering our age and experience, we would get spanked and made to do it over again. To make matters worse, I didn't have any friends at church.

We moved into the ward, and there were a couple girls my age along with a few who were a year younger than me. Needless to say, they were all already best friends with each other, so I just kind of sat back and was ignored again. Not intentionally, of course; but I was ignored nonetheless. And as a result of having no friends in the church, I started to no longer desire to come. I was as close to Heavenly Father as I've ever been, but given my family situation and my relationship with the people whom I went to church with, I didn't have a desire to go; I didn't care anymore. Nobody cared about me, so why should I care about them? I had already tried to make friends with the girls, and then I had tried with the boys; nobody was interested in me, even though I would have traded my favorite things for even a moment of their friendship. I felt pathetic and unwanted at church; and don't put it past a child to have those feelings. I know first-hand that children can experience every feeling that adults can, and they can experience those feelings ten times worse, too. So it happens that I slowly matured, even at such a young age; as did my brother.

Robby had a hard time adjusting to Oregon; a harder time than me, in different ways. Keep in mind that he was almost three when we moved. Our apartment had previously had cats in it, and as a result the whole place was absolutely coated in fleas. And it just so happens that these fleas loved my brother; he was covered in little pink bumps soon after we moved ourselves in. He would cry because he itched so bad, and when he scratched the bites, they would become sore and sometimes begin to bleed. We found a cure fairly quickly, though; and that was oranges.

My mom and I would feed him oranges all of the time then take the peels and put them all over the floor, or into the bath with him. Needless to say, we smelled like oranges wherever we went; but it did the trick. They all died, and I can remember vacuuming and hearing them being sucked up like a pile of crumbs, only it was in every room, all over the apartment. And that was disgusting.

It's funny; in all that I'm recalling, I'm forgetting to mention key details. When we moved into our apartment, I kid you not; my brother and I had our matresses, and I believe my mom had hers also. That was it, aside from our clothes. We had nothing else; no furniture, no television. Just our phone, our mattresses, and each other. We would often have to skip meals because we didn't have any food, and we would go to bed hungry most of the time. We were constantly on the verge of losing our apartment and living in our rusty old car, because there was no money. Does it make more sense as to why my brother and I are so close now? We had nothing; we were each other's playmates, and we both suffered when our mom was in her usual good temper. We couldn't do anything except love each other, as we weren't really getting it anywhere else.

Then I met the family that lived one apartment above us. She, Andrea, was a single mother who had three children; a teenage daughter, a son a little older than me, and a baby who was spoiled beyond spoiled. I didn't know then what I know now, because like I child, I was ignorant to some things that I didn't understand; for example, I know now that Andrea's teenage daughter was not a good person for me to be around.

The sad thing is, I found Andrea's daughter to be somewhat of a hero to me; I idolized her, and wanted to be just like her. I didn't realize that she was teaching me things that a child should not know, like swear words, for example. I also didn't know about the activities that she took part in, which were far from the ways of God, let me tell you. But she was the only person that I really had to look up to; my mom was angry and teary all of the time, and my dad was never around. I had only two friends my age, and they both looked up to Andrea's daughter, too. I didn't have a great church influence because I was alone there, so I didn't know which way was up in a world of good and evil. You can't criticize me for not knowing what I was doing; I was a child, who didn't know much of anything.

I had had the "sex talk" when I was in kindergarten, and I didn't understand it. It didn't make sense to me. Andrea's daughter told me everything, and she told me that it was fun. I never did it, so don't even think that I did; but I didn't know then that it was a bad thing to do it outside of marriage. With her, I learned some crude figures of speech, and I learned a lot of bad words, too. I remember that she would call me a certain name all of the time, and seeing as how I didn't know what it meant or know that it was bad, I called my mom it one time.

My mom, instead of explaining to me that that was a bad word that I shouldn't say, yelled at me. She didn't tell me what it meant, or why it was bad; she just yelled at me and forbade me to ever say it again [and she also banned me from being around Andrea's daughter], and then she stomped off and cried because I had said something really mean to her. I was shocked; I didn't know that what I had said was so offensive, and I was confused because I didn't know why it was offensive or bad, when I had thought it was some sort of affectionate nickname. After that day, I grew up some more.

I can barely remember having my dad around during those years of my life, because he was rarely at home; but when he was home, you'd swear that it was World War III inside that little apartment, with all the yelling and shouting that was going on.

My dad is a man of extreme patience; he is very strong, and hardly ever loses his temper or yells. I can't remember him ever yelling at my mom; but I can very much remember my mom screaming at him. She would blame him for everything; she would yell at him for never being home, she would tell him that his job was crap, and then she would shout at him because we didn't have any money.

Children have an inate sense for catching things their parents don't say; they can read the tones in your voice like an open book. In fact, I think that a parent's tone of voice hurts more than any words that a person can say. Anyway, when my parents would disagree, my brother and I would literally huddle together in a corner of our room, with the light off and a blanket covering our heads. We were scared to death; neither of us would utter a single word. Robby would occasionally let out a little whimper, and I would hold him closer. We were both too afraid to cry or say anything, for fear of our parents turning on us and finding some reason to hate us. We were afraid that our parents wouldn't love us if we let them know that we were scared, and we were even more terrified that they would get a divorce.

You may raise an eyebrow and wonder, "Why would they be scared of their parents getting a divorce? I'd be more scared for my safety." I have to say that my brother and I were quite safe with our mother; she wouldn't do anything aside from spank us, and that didn't happen all too often. But I also have to say that divorce is a child's worst nightmare; they can handle lack of sleep, having no toys or friends, and starvation; but the instant that their parents start arguing, they become afraid of losing their family, and everything they know. We were terrified of losing our parents, possibly being split up, and never seeing each other or our other parent ever again. Our family was all we had, and we felt like we were losing it; which made us cling to each other even harder. Even though he was only three and I was almost eight, we felt these things; both of us. I doubt that we'll ever forget those feelings of being so terrified that we couldn't even speak.

I grew up some more.

I'll have to continue this on another post tomorrow; this one is incredibly long already, and I have to get off of the computer for now.