Today is my older brother's birthday. So I wanted to share several memories of growing up as his "little" (and likely obnoxious) sister to explain a bit of why I am grateful for him!
Due to the large gap in age between us (9 years, with no siblings in between), Ben was often tasked with watching us younger siblings when we were growing up. I don't necessarily remember a lot about this, except I've seen some of our home videos -- so I know he was usually helping corral the kiddos while my mom was filming. And I remember at least one time when he walked to pick me up from a friend's house. I don't remember much about it, I just remember him walking me home and making a snide comment to some neighborhood kid said something rude to him (don't remember what, though). Ah, the things we remember.
I remember, after he moved away to go to college, how excited we always were to see him when he'd go home to Panama to visit. I remember his huge collection of cassette tapes of Guns 'n' Roses and other things (I don't remember the others, though... just the G 'n' R). Yep, cassette tapes -- so awesome, right? Oh, the Moody Blues. He listened to them too at some point.
I remember how he and I would write letters back and forth for a while. Those meant a lot to me. I mean, I really looked up to my "big" brother; so when he moved away and wrote to me, that was the bee's knees :). And I recall how hard it was for me to accept that he had grown up and was moving on with life. He was "my" big brother -- and I felt very possessive of him for a long time.
I remember him playing the Atari a lot (old school... awesome old school). And I remember there was one game called Dandy where you could create your own level and I think he made one that was basically impossible to beat. You "warped" into that level and were surrounded by all the monsters. I can still hear (in my head) the sounds of the monsters "hitting" the character (which was a number with legs...) and then the explosion-like sound of death. Hahaha.
But I think the best memory I have of him took place in 1989. December of 1989. It was during Operation Just Cause (a "war" that took place in Panama while we lived there). There was a lot of fear during that time. We lived in U.S. Civilian housing, but we weren't on-base -- which meant there were no guards monitoring the entering and exiting of our little community. (Actually, eventually things got bad enough that there were for a time.) I remember my parents always having the news on the tv at this time -- even during dinner, which was not the case beforehand. One night, they were downstairs watching TV in the dark while the rest of us were upstairs. Ben was entertaining us by drawing us little cartoon characters. He was very talented with these types of things. He drew us a goofy family. The daughter was listening to a walkman with her eyes closed and not watching where she was going and was about to trip on a rock... The sun was holding a lit round bomb (think Mario Bros bombs) and the animated duck on his shirt was freaking out looking at the bomb... the dad was sitting in a recliner eating potato chips (and was a rather large man)... and the mom was standing on a stool afraid of a mouse who was sticking its tongue out at her. I don't know why we all remember that so well, but we do. We thought those cartoons were the most awesome ever. I remember, though, that we were told to go into the hallway upstairs if we wanted the big lights on (we were keeping the lights to a minimum so as to draw little attention to our home). And then I remember my parents came running up the stairs at one point to be with us. Apparently there had been snipers in the neighborhood trying to get onto one of the military bases which had a back-road access through our community (that wasn't really guarded), so some U.S. tanks were rolling into our neighborhood. I'd never seen my parents act so afraid and it scared me.... I remember crying.
Anyway, that's just best memory I have of Ben... The memory of him taking care of us and entertaining us during a scary time while my parents were trying to know all that was going on to keep our family safe.
And I have to say that, of all my mom's 4 kids, I think Ben is the one who got her compassion. Which is a trait I admire a lot.
So, Happy Birthday Ben! I love you -- and I'm grateful you're my brother :).
What are you grateful for today?
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