To My Family: Thank You for a Beautiful Childhood

Today I turn 20.

"Bittersweet" seems appropriate.

It's not really bidding farewell to my teenage life that bothers me. I'm fine with moving forward into my 20's. It's just weird. I had barely adjusted to saying "19" when someone asked me how old I was.

I can guarantee the little girl I babysit won't know the difference. As far as she is concerned, I'm not an adult until I'm married.

So now it's time to be reminiscent. I've been planning this post for two months, so I intend to make the most of it. This post is not going to be about me (not really). It's about my family. Because if there is anyone you should be congratulating today for surviving these past 20 years, it's them.

I was the trouble child. Ask anyone, even people who didn't know me as a child. Word gets around, and I am saddled with the reputation of being "the Terrible Twos" poster child. It used to bother me, but now I roll with it. "I was a horrible child. The good news is that I got all of that out of the way right off."

It's mostly true.

Mom still takes one look as a child who is screaming, being obstinate, pulling an attitude, or heading toward a spanking and says, “Yup. Must be a second child.” I’m her living proof of overcoming trials and tantrums, of persevering through moodiness and contrariness; proof that spankings work.

Admittedly, I had my rough spots. Still do, and I'm learning to accept that I always will. I've taken to praying that though bumps in the road don't cause any serious damage. So first off, congratulate my parents, because I don't know how they did it. People who know us have an endearing habit of making my parents out to be model parents. People who really know us know what a miracle Mom and Dad truly are. Yes, they are human, but I can say with absolute honesty that there was never one day in my entire life where I believed they did not love me and want the absolute best for me. Sure, some days I was convinced they hated me, but it was a superficial feeling brought on by a well-deserved punishment.

Every day Mom and Dad push us to be the best and to do the best we are capable of. They see the potential in us that even we ourselves ignore. They are our greatest cheerleaders. And they lead by example.

We were raised to be self-sufficient. When I was about 6, I asked Mom in all innocence to teach me to wash the dishes. She jumped at the opportunity, and it paid off, because never once have we owned a dishwasher which worked for longer than 6 months. We were raised with the understanding that being their children did not mean we were entitled to a free ride. We have always had chores, and any money we had we earned (though sometimes it was purely by virtue of turning a year older). It has always been very plain that we live in their house, we add to the dishes and the laundry and the mess, and so we are required to contribute to keeping it clean and in working order.

We know how to tell when something is wrong with our cars, we know how to work through problems to find resolutions, we all have a keen sense of how things work - and even an intuition for how people work.

I will always be thankful for how my parents trained me to be independent (though I sometimes hate it) and engrained in me a work ethic (though some days I prefer to ignore it).

As I said, we all had rough spots. One night they gave up trying to make us eat squash and declared that Heather was their favorite child because she was the only one who could swallow it. When one of us had pushed Mom to her limit, she would throw up her hands and tell us that Dad could deal with us when he got home - which worked in her favor, because that kind of threat was a punishment all its own. I remember the looks when I fainted from a breath-holding contest or a bout of hives; the looks when - twice in my life - I tripped over my own feet and skinned only the bridge of my nose; when I finally caught on to riding a bike at 8 years old but missed the bit about stopping and ended up launching myself onto the grass; when I lost control of my scooter going downhill and chipped my front teeth.

It was never about being our best friends; Mom and Dad are more than that. They are our confidantes, our counselors, our comforters, our coaches. I can always count on their experience to be a guide when I'm stuck.

So here's to my parents, my highest heroes by virtue of getting me this far by whatever means possible.

And then there are my siblings, and there are simply too many memories to put into one post. Wesley and I always had a hard time getting along. I can't pinpoint it. I'd like to say he was jealous of me as a kid. For a little while, my legs were longer than his, and I was the first to achieve three steps running up a tree on paper routes. I bucked up and ran both sides of routes on the winter morning when he was too cold. My vocabulary contained more large (albeit useless) words than his. I had a habit of nit-picking and correcting him, which drove him to insanity some days.

But I was also jealous of him. He could ride his bike with his eye closed and no hands while he ate a sandwich. He wasn't as scared of Death Alley as I was. He was quicker to jump to adventure, and he always got the cool pets (and he had two gerbils at one time!). 

But the more I see of life, the more grateful I am to have such a brother. We both misunderstood each other a lot growing up, and for a while we couldn't stand to be around each other, but somehow we worked past that. He understands me better than most people. He has a sly sense of humor and sarcasm that sometimes even my carefully honed skills can't detect. He has a head for machines and puzzles, for which I am exceedingly envious. And come on; not many girls can pull a popularity card like "my brother has a fake eye".

Then there's Heather, and right about here words fail me. You really would have to see it to believe just how crazy awesome she is. Her talents range from musical to comical. She's the first to pull out a TV, movie, or children's radio show quote and effortlessly incorporate it into the situation at hand. She isn't afraid to be spontaneous, and more than once we've caught her rocking out to a spatula over a grilled cheese sandwich or practicing her mental patient impersonation on the dogs. She can imitate a wide range of accents and characters, one of my favorites being the bat from Anastasia. Yes, she can sing very well, but she also has that special ability of purposefully singing very badly.

Allenna is the biggest dreamer I know. Nothing is impossible to her, and she inherited the family habit of quickly making a talent out of the hobbies she sets her mind to taking up. She has a special way of seeing the world when most people glance over it. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with her, because her mental track runs a different course than the rest of us. She's a creator, a builder, an artist, and she is never afraid to embrace who she is and disregard what the world decrees.

Jealous yet? That's ok; when people give us strange looks for our antics in the grocery store, I know that secretly they are, too. My family makes a point of being ourselves, in home and in public, though we do try to tone down the awesomeness around other people so we don't scare them off with the sheer wonder of it. My mom was the adult teens wanted on the activity. My friends learned not to confide stupid secrets in me or say things they didn't want repeated, because I always ended up passing it along to Dad for us to muse over and chuckle at (sorry, guys; he trained me well). Mom and I rarely have complete verbal conversations anymore because our minds are working too fast for our mouths to keep up, but we always know what the other means. Dad's sense of humor can be the greatest balm for a rough day, simply because we all understand it more than other people, and that alone is comforting.

Even through difficult years, I have always felt safe, secure, and loved. Mom and Dad daily live out that love toward each other and toward us. With them, I have learned that it's best to be honest and simple about myself, to accept myself, and the let the world see me exactly as I am. 

My memory is teeming with memories, both fond and cringe-worthy. We are all a little accident prone: Heather falls down stairs. I fall down stairs. Allenna was always losing one shoe. Heather was always tripping over nothing. Wesley got a lot of bumps on his head.

We have a bad history with animals. Ebony the cat stole the hot dog pieces out of my mac 'n' cheese and dragged a dead snake into the house. Calamity got stuck in the dryer while it was running. Duke the cockatiel loved to fly but was no good at it, running into the window and landing in a sink full of soapy water or crash landing into a table leg. Duchess couldn't fly, and the one time she tried she ended up in the laundry basket. One morning I found Duke sitting on the top of the fridge with Blare the cat inches away from him, both innocent as could be. Ivy the dog was an escape artist whose attitude put Sasha to shame. There was Bunny, the mean cat Mom thought could be sweetened by motherhood, and Ghost, the smelly undergrown cat with six toes on each foot. We had the goldfish, including Cyclops and Fin and the fat one who ate them; and the guppies Robin Hood, Marian, Little John, and Sarah.

The house went through a rodent stage where we had the hamsters, including Tom Thumb the dwarf albino and Bowser, and the one who drowned in a bucket of water; and then the guinea pigs Trixie, Claire, and Frankie; and finally Poka and Dot, the gerbils.
Now we have chickens and ducks.

Trying to put it all into one post makes my childhood seem colorful and full of adventure. Not to say it wasn't. Thing is, it's everyday for me, and I'm so used to it I don't stop to think anymore how blessed I am. And if you ever wondered why my family seems to strange, maybe now you can understand a little better. I haven't even got started on the rest of the relatives. For starters, my mom's sister married my dad's nephew....