Day 25, and I skipped a couple of days. Not that I wasn't thankful, but that I had a houseful of kids and grandkids and no time to get by myself, even if I had wanted to.
I've been thinking alot about my brother for the past couple of days. When we were kids, you didn't see one without the other. Some of our favorite things were playing in Papa's barn with our cousins, playing army, and playing Tarzan.
We played in the loft of Papa's barn, moving the bales of hay to create forts, ships, or mountain cabins. Our imaginations had no end. My brother, my cousins, and I started the "Barnyard Club" and began to save our pennies. My brother was the president, because he was the only boy. One of my cousins was the vice president because she was the oldest, and the other cousin was the treasurer. I was just the "member" because I was the littlest and the youngest. We saved our pennies until we had enough to buy our grandma a little wind-up alarm clock. Grandma kept this little clock until she passed away and now I think the Vice President owns it.
I never had the luxury of playing dolls or house with my brother because...well...he was a boy and boys play army and fighting stuff. He and I went through one of Papa's dried up cornfields annihilating the whole entire field of "enemy soldiers" in one afternoon. The whole field lay flat after our victorious battle. Unknown to us, our uncle had driven down the road, parked and watched the whole battle take place. Uncle Houston chuckled constantly as he recounted the complete story to Papa.
And, of course, Tarzan was one of our favorites since we watched him kill giant crocodiles with a little knife, underwater, on our black and white tv. Tarzan could swing through the trees on the vines, call a whole herd of elephants and lions with his yell, and wipeout a tribe of maneating cannibals in an afternoon. He had a monkey, Cheetah, and a girlfriend, Jane. Well, I couldn't very well be Jane since we were brother and sister, so he called me Sally. I could never pick out my own name. I always wanted a pretty name like Michelle, or Cindy, but no, I was Sally. No exotic names like Jasmine...just Sally.
On and on we would play. We did get into some mischief occasionally. It seems I spent half of my childhood hearing him yell, "Run, Joy, run!" It was always interesting.
When my hero brother came home one day with a different look on his face, I began to worry about him. He just wanted to talk about some girl named Judy, whose eyes were as blue as the sky. Yuck. I didn't know her, but I definitely didn't like her. But to my satisfaction, the next day he was back to the same brother I remembered.
I got my love of books when I was just a young girl. Every Saturday morning, my brother and I pulled out the skateboards and skated about a mile to the library, just off Chapman Highway, looked around for awhile, checked out a few books, and read to our hearts content until the next Saturday. Then we went through our routine again.
We were very poor growing up, so we ended up with people's hand me downs of everything from toys to clothes to bicycles, or rather, just one bicycle. But that didn't slow us down. I was either on the seat while he stood and peddled, or I was perched on the handle bars. There we'd go...speeding down the hill, while the neighborhood dog was nipping at our heels, me squealing with my legs up in the air.
We've been lost together, we've been in trouble together, and we've loved each other through it all. We were still close all through school and high school. He was the nosy, protective big brother and I was still his little sister he needed to protect. As far as I can remember, we only had two arguments in our lifetime, and the only reason I can remember those is because we never fought with each other.
We don't talk everyday now. We don't see each other real often, but he'll always be my Tarzan, and I'll always be his Sally.
I love my brother with all my heart and am so thankful he's always been my buddy.
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