The Days of Yore?!

Wednesday night I had dinner with my brother and his girlfriend. It was kind of funny to me when we were first trying to schedule a night. I emailed them on a Monday about dinner that Thursday, thinking that would be plenty of time to check schedules and get back to me…he got back to me the next morning with a whole huge email (about 4 paragraphs compared to my one-liner) with their schedules for the next week and a half, saying that the following week’s Wednesday was best.

It really made me realize: Shnikey’s! When did life get so crazy?!

Here we are, all living and working in NYC, and we can’t even schedule a dinner!!

The funny part to me was that Doug’s schedule was so crazy and he’s not even working at the moment! Now I know why we never really did see him while he had a job and worked for “the man!”

I know I’ve talked about Doug a few times before, about how a crazy-talented artist he is and my tattoo he designed for me. The demands of a career in his industry are many, taking up many precious hours of the day (often 12-15), and those days don’t run on a normal 5 work-day week…they run until the job is done!

He has said many times over the course of the years that we (the family) don’t understand these demands. In all fairness, he hasn’t said this in a while, but it was true back in the day. It was like growing pains, getting used to the idea that we might only hear from him once a week (on a good week). We grew up as a tight-knit family, and time spent with one another was, and is, always treasured and valued, almost selfishly so…and that hasn’t changed. If anything, the older we get, and more we grow up and apart, that time spent is even rarer a currency in this crazy life we live.

To understand a little bit of the family dynamic, you need to understand a few minor details:
I’m the youngest of three. With there being 5 years between me and my older sister, my brother is in the middle, 2 years my senior.

1. My mom was fit to be tied when I was a baby because I was walking (read=running) and talking by 9 months, trying to always catch up with my older siblings.

2. My brother and sister were always fit to be tied trying to run faster so I couldn’t catch up with them, ‘cause seriously, who wants a tag-along unless it’s a cookie?!

3. I was a more fascinating play-thing to my brother than his legos for a while.

While my sister was off doing Big Sister things, trying not to pay attention to the fact that my brother and I were near killing each other in the living room, we were infact trying to kill each other in the living room (all make-believe, of course)!

So now-a-days, when we’re supposed to be all grown-up and stuff (still really waiting for that to happen), we try hard to stay in touch and see each other when we can. For a while last fall, our relationship was a little rocky and not as solid as I would have liked, but we were both going through a lot of crap as life tends to throw your way once in a while, understandably. But thankfully, we’re good now because really in the end, there is nobody’s opinion that really means more to me than my brother’s. Sometimes, because of the person he is, and the way he has, I find myself wanting to be him when I grow up! And then I remember all the times we used to play WWF (yes, it was still called WWF back in the day) in the living room, with him trying to convince me that “this time I could really take him!”

One other important thing to note is that my brother used to be pudgy (to put it nicely) before he hit his growth-spurt. He was, quite literally, at least twice my size. There was no WAY in hell I was ever going to take his ass down, but his false sense of encouragement taught me one thing:

I was one gullible mo-fo!

Good thing that has changed...ssssuuuuurrreeee!

But I love him dearly for it because while he was showering me with attention, even if it was for his own amusement, it was still time he spent with me instead of the other boys on the block! He will always be the Lucy to my Charlie Brown, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.