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27 June, 1998
I've been thinking about my littlest brother a lot of late. Probably because he is most likely coming down to spend 3 weeks with me here and working a small job at my place of employment. Another reason is that my entire family is currently on the European continent, except for me. Tom is in Rome until the end of July, Mom and Dad and Ted are in Ireland until tomorrow for the first time in 18 years. The last time we went to Ireland, Teddy was just a wee baby, just under a year old. He wasn't walking yet and he was still plump in that baby way. He hadn't started to get chronically ill yet so he had that healthy pink flush in his cheeks and he was mostly a very happy and easy-going baby. From my memories of that time, I have impressions of lots of wide blue skies, but also a lot of grey. I made a barometer out of a coffee can and a drinking straw according to the instructions in one of my kids' magazines, to help my Dad know when it was going to rain. It didn't work very well. Teddy had a swing which was attached to the thick wooden beams in the kitchen of the old farmhouse we were renting. In my memory, that's where he spent the lion's share of his time. I guess because it made him happy to be there. He doesn't remember anything from that first trip, of course. I have all sorts of images, from the stingray (or maybe it was a halibut) which sat, camouflaged in the sand beneath the "deep water" in the inlet beach, the day we went fishing and I got the fish hook stuck in my hand, picking up some Nancy Drew mysteries I had never seen before (British paperbacks with lurid 70's-style covers) and many days wearing my red wellies and tromping about the countryside in the heather with Dad and Tom. (Yes they have heather heaths in Ireland too) But Ted doesn't have these, and this is his first opportunity to find his own images of that green land which housed our ancestors. I am in fact, impatient for tomorrow or the next day or the next, when they will be home and I can ask him what he thought, what he liked, whether or not he wants to go back. All the while, I am preparing a cot for him here in the computer room, beneath the window and making the room neater and more cozy for a long-term inhabitant. Teddy has changed so much from that plump little baby, you see. He's grown tall. Very tall, 6'4" and still growing. He is applying to the U.S. Naval Academy. He wants to be a pilot. He wants to become an astronaut eventually and fly into space. I sometimes have trouble reconciling this image of him with the little boy who spent so much time lying sick in bed and lost all of that baby fat all too quickly. The little boy who spoke neither English nor French while we were in Europe, but his own personal admixture of both and was held back a year in the U.S. school system as a result. The boy who had such frustration at school and terrible temper tantrums because of all the things which were stacked up against him. While I was gone, in college, away in Europe, moved out of home, he suddenly grew up into this smart, collected, self-sufficient, motivated, polite and just generally excellent young man. He achieves more in school than Tom or I did, not suffering from the over-specialization which I did, or Tom's devil-may-care study habits. He is sensitive and artistic, but a master of logic and reason as well. He makes me so very proud of him and we have fun together in the few short times when we both have time to spend together. So I'm looking forward to getting him all to myself for three weeks, looking forward to showing him the area, taking him out to places and giving him his first taste of the Real World. I have in some ways a quixotic relationship with my family. Meaning that it waxes and wanes according to the seasons. But we are a close, chaotic, jolly bunch and the love that we have for each other, for the most part, amply outweighs any of the sorrows and dissensions which arise. So ... Teddy ... I love you come home soon, so I can SEE you! |
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