Aside from having the most incredible sisters in the entire universe, we had three older brothers. I say had because only two of them are still with us. Joe has gone on to what I believe are bigger and better things.
Brothers are not like sisters (duh). They don't appear to form the same link amongst themselves as sisters often do, and brothers and sisters don't seem to connect in quite the same way sisters and sisters seem to. Maybe that has some connection to the macho male persona and boys don't cry and all that bull, but I just think guys are wired differently. That is not to say they don't love, and love deeply. It just usually isn't expressed in quite the same ways. Also, our brothers were older; Harry is ten years older than I am, and Glenn is five. Joe was only three years older than I, but that still made him seven years older than "the twins".
The story from my mother is that after she had Harry she had no intention of ever going through childbirth again. Once was more than enough! And she did manage a good five years before she had to swallow that crow. However, my mother had three siblings, all of whom were much older than she. One of her siblings had already produced a daughter before my mother gave birth to Harry. After she had Harry, another of her siblings had a child, and it too was a daughter. Now, I'm sure my mother loved Harry (who was called Butch at the time because his real name is William Harry Knight, III). But she started to think it might not be so bad to have a precious little baby girl. So five years after Harry's birth, nature took its course (remember, this is the 1940's so birth control was sketchy at best), and along came Glenn. I'm sure my mother was thrilled with Glenn, and I know she loved him dearly. He was, however, not a precious little girl. Now, my mother may have been a bit hardheaded (and may have passed that trait along to one or two or six of her children). Since she'd already bitten the bullet on the "no more kids" rule, she decided to go for it, and two years later she was presented with a bouncing baby, whom she named Joseph.
At this point, you are probably wondering where my father is in all this. It is my belief the only time my father was actually present and accounted for was at conception. My father is an entire story unto himself, and I'm sure he will pop up in my writings, but just take it as read that he doesn't have a starring role in our lives.
After Joe's arrival, my mother's remaining sibling produced a child, who was, of course, female. Then all of her siblings stopped. That was it -- one daughter each. And here is my mother with three rambunctious, healthy, rowdy boys. Most people would have just let it go, but not my mom. Three years later she is finally blessed with her heart's desire (?), that precious little girl she had longed to hold for so many years. I was anything but precious or little when I was born -- I weighed 8½ pounds and was 21" long. But, by now my mom is pretty much a sport about the whole thing. In spite of the fact that her marriage was a disaster by most reasonable standards and in spite of the fact that my father was nowhere to be found (I said he was there for conception, not delivery), she tells the nurse on the way back to the maternity ward after my delivery, "next time I'll just have twin girls, even up the family, and quit". And, true to her word, that is exactly what she did. Oh, and yes, my father provided the DNA for my sisters too.
But back to my brothers. My brothers started out with a pretty decent childhood. They were close to my mother's family in Georgia and they had grandparents and siblings and cousins and pretty much everything a kid could need growing up in the deep south (think Opie Taylor). My father's family is large and though he was seldom a part of our life, his parents and brothers and sisters and their children all were. When I came along, my brothers treated me just like another boy and I was fine with that. But no good deed goes unpunished so they say, and my father popped back into our lives and uprooted the family to move us all to southern Florida. As the saying goes, life was never the same after that.
This is not the time to air all the dirt that came after our move, but things became difficult for all of us and my brothers suffered the most because they were the oldest and they understood more about what was happening. Those years did not give us the opportunity to bond as a normal family might have, and so my connection to my brothers was tenuous at best for many years. Fortunately, we all came through it only a little worse for the wear, and as adults we have had the opportunity to forge those bonds.
I can tell you thousands of stories about my brothers, and some of them are actually funny -- some of them not so much. But I can also tell you, without any hesitation, my brothers are good men who have made good lives for themselves and their families. I love them without reservation, and as we age, I want to spend more time with them. I wish we could make up for the times we missed. We can't, but for whatever time we have left, I am blessed to have these men in my life.
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