My
father used to have many expressions that he would use. They were always
strange but after you heard them enough times they became familiar and just
part of who he was. When my siblings and I were younger he did not like to
swear much in front of us. If he hit his hand with a hammer he would just shout
“Bears!” Other times you would hear him say things like “Damn Sam,” or “Hell’s
Bells.” Whenever Dad was getting in the car to play poker, and we wanted to go
with him, we would ask, “Where are you going, Dad?” He’d say “Europe. It’s very far.” My father
also had odd expressions that he used to show disdain with you or to praise
you. One night when we were out chipping ice off the driveway and I complained
that it was too cold, he called me a “lily liver.” Another time, when I spent
the day working with him to rehab the standalone garage at our first house when
we moved back to Chicago, I heard things like “You’re cooking with gas, Tom,”
or “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
My Dad wasn’t
around a lot when we were kids. He worked all of the time and traveled
frequently. Even so he did the best he could to spend time with us. He made
sure that we did Indian Guides and Princesses. He was always there on weekends.
He took off a few weeks every summer so that we all could go somewhere on
vacation together as a family. As we got older and he had more flexibility in
his job, we saw him all of the time. He became very dedicated to his family. I
had a similar experience in my own life as I got older and work was less
important compared to my family. Following in the right footsteps, I guess.
Whenever
we went on vacation we drove in our station wagon. My older sister, Melissa and
my brother would sit in the far back, and my younger sister, Stacia, and I
would share the middle seat. My mother was a big fan of the buddy system and so
my older sister and I were essentially assigned one of the younger kids, who we
were supposed to keep an eye on. I took that responsibility very seriously. I would read books and let Stacia sleep,
curled upon the vinyl next to me.
Stacia
and I have always had a very special relationship. As a young man I was very
self-involved and even selfish to some degree. (Some say I still am.) When it
came to people I cared about though, especially my little sister, that all
melted away. My older sister, Melissa, is one of the most compassionate and
caring people I have ever known and has always been my friend. She took care of
me a lot. She taught me how to take care of someone else. I always took care of
Stacia.
One afternoon, when I was in high school, I
was reading in my room and Stacia came running in. “Tom, come quick,” she
yelled. I leapt up. “What’s the matter, babe?”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the front yard. “Those morons
across the street just threw a rabbit out of the window.” In those days we had awful neighbors that
lived across the street. They drank and partied a lot. They were young adults,
just kids really, who lived in a house that their parents had abandoned to
them. I said, “What are we going do, Stacia?”
She didn’t wait. She ran across the street, crawled into the bushes and
then brought back to me a trembling white rabbit.” I got a box and we wrapped her up in a
blanket. We placed some lettuce and carrots in with her. Stacia, just shaking
her head, said, “How could someone do that?”
My
sister, Stacia, has always been partial to animals and has owned many of them. I
remember one time, when she was very little, catching her throwing rocks at a
tree. I asked her what she was doing. She said, “I’m trying to scare away the
blue jays. They’re stealing eggs.” I threw rocks with her.
The night we rescued the rabbit, my dad came to me and said “Let’s go for a
ride.” I asked him where we were going. There
was a vague sense in the back of my mind that I was in trouble for something. When
we were in the car, he answered. “We’re going to buy a rabbit cage and some
food. You know she is not going to let go of that.” I nodded my head. He said, “She already has
too many animals in her room. Would you mind keeping it down by you?” I lived in a room on the lowest level of our
house that my father had built for me so that I could have some adolescent
privacy. I replied “Sure, Dad.” He patted
my arm and said, “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
My room
became the rabbit’s playground. Stacia
and I both used to let it loose so that it could run around safely without the
dog bothering it. Some nights I would take her out and let her sit on my desk
or whatever book I was reading. My friends at first thought it was strange that
I had a living rabbit sitting on my shelves but after awhile they came to love
it too.
Stacia
and I weren’t always on the same page.
As a young man I got very self-involved and selfish about the things I
was involved in. When Melissa went off to Illinois, she told me that I was the
one that would have to now take care of the younger ones like she always did. I
said, “This is my senior year. I just
want to have fun.” She smiled and said, “It doesn’t work that way.”
The
first time my parents went out and I had to sit with the siblings, Stacia and I
got into a heated argument and she put a pencil into my hand. I got very angry,
picked her up, and tossed her into her bed.
She was in junior high at the time, but she has never been anything but
a small woman. I threw a copy of Catcher
in the Rye into her room and locked the door. I told her she couldn’t come
out until she read it. My skills with
young adults were not exactly refined at that time. A few hours later she picked the lock with a
bobby pin and came to find me. She
bandaged my hand. She sat close to me on the couch where I was watching an old
movie. “I like what I read of the book, so far,” she said and went to sleep against me.
The
first time I came home after leaving to follow Melissa to Illinois; I went to
our high school because my friend, Ross, told me he would be there. I walked into the choir room wearing my boots
and a long camel hair coat. I had long
hair and a beard. Despite that he was in the middle of a rehearsal, the
director, who is a nice man, nodded towards Stacia. She ran down off the risers
and wrapped her arms around me. It was
the first time I had seen her in make-up. She looked beautiful.
I kept
that rabbit we rescued outside my room until I moved to school for good. One
night when I was home for a visit, my Mom came to me and said, “You know she is
getting older.” I thought she was talking about Stacia. I said, “No matter
where I am, Mom, I will always take care of her.” My mom smiled and put her
hand on my face. “That’s wonderful T.S. You’re a good brother, but I’m talking
about the rabbit. It will be soon when she has to go live at the circus.”
Stacia
is now in her forties and I am fifty. Even though I don’t have to take care of
my little sister anymore, I still cherish her. She is a talented and beautiful
woman. Just as kind to animals and people as she ever was. Stacia and her
husband, who I happen to like very much, and who she gave me the privilege of
checking out on their first date, have two wonderful daughters. Both girls have
high voices like my sister, so I always call them my squeakers. They are both still young but when they were very
little they liked that when they came to visit me, I’d take them both in my
arms, buckle them into the van for their ride home and say, “I love my nieces
to pieces.” I did same thing for
Melissa’s twins, who are both now in college.
On
certain days, when Stacia is not working, we go to lunch. Our favorite is to
share a plate of Reuben rolls at Quigley’s, the Irish bar in the town where I live.
We laugh a lot and sometimes we cry about the people we both loved and lost…mostly
our parents. We enjoy each other’s company. I noticed the other day that our
relationship was so different now than what it was before. Whereas once I always
took care of her, we now take of each other. I know that there is nothing I
wouldn’t do for her and I know there is nothing she wouldn’t do for me. She
frequently does. There have been times
when the world went wrong and she has always been there for me.
While it
is nice to have a rescued rabbit in your life, and I miss her, having a little
sister, like Stacia, who is willing to rescue rabbits, like me, is a whole lot
better.
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