brothers

Comedy

Posted on by Christine

He would swoop in out of nowhere, and the harassment would begin. I was allowed to ride my bike on one street my mother had deemed safe. It was close enough for her to walk to or yell out the back door when I was needed at home.

My friends and I would buzz along, minding our own business, and a police siren would send the alarm that we weren’t alone. My older brother was talented in sound effects, and he made it seem authentic.

I had learned to look over my back, so I could outrun him if I had the chance. He had caught on to my dodging technique and would keep silent until he was right up on me. Easily I should have been able to escape, but he had a partner who would get in front of me while he closed in from behind. Ultimately, I stopped to avoid running into the neighbor kid, his minion.

If he got me in the middle of the road, he would demand I pull over to the curb, like the city officially licensed him to be an officer. Once I complied, he would take out a pad of paper and a pencil to write my ticket. He would purposely stare at the sky, trying to come up with something. He should have flunked every class in school because of inattention, but when it came to this, he was perfect in his penmanship. 

“How fast were you going, do you think?”  He would say in this nasal tone that sounded nothing like him in our house that was two lawns over. 

I had no speedometer on my bike, but I had to go through the motions to get away from him faster.

“I don’t know! 20?”

“20 what? 20 miles per hour? I think that is low. I think you were going way faster than that.”

“50! I was going 50!”

“No. I think it was less than 50.”

It was like playing the higher or lower game on the Price is Right.

“40?!”

He would sigh, put the eraser on his chin, tilt his head and ponder the situation. Meanwhile, my friends were racing by laughing because they thought he was hilarious. 

“You might be right about that. 40 sounds about right,” he would state in slow motion. Like a record being played backward. 

Scribbling down a number, he would then proceed to inspect my vehicle. 

“That back end looks like it’s ready to fall off. When was the last time you had that checked?”

My young mind would go blank trying to answer questions that didn’t make sense. 

I was given a bike used by every kid in the family that my dad had repainted, put on a banana seat, and had multi-colored plastic spoke covers. 

“I don’t know if those are street legal. We might have to take them off.”

On and on he went walking around jotting down infractions that should have warranted my removal from society. 

“Let me go!”I would say after giving him plenty of time to annoy me.

“Are you talking back to a police officer, Chris? I will have to add that. That’s not good.” 

When I thought it would never end, he would tear the sheet off with a grand flair and hand it to me.

“I don’t ever want to see you do that again,” he would say, walking away. I had no idea what he meant. Then, he would focus his attention on my friends.

After witnessing my humiliation, you would think they would want nothing to do with it. It was just the opposite. They could hardly wait their turn because they thought he was humorous. 

From their standpoint, I would have too, but I had to live with him, and it was non-stop entertainment before streaming services were available. Once he set his attention on me, I knew I had to figure out a way to get out of it. Sometimes, it was so bizarre I sat transfixed, trying to comprehend what his brain was doing; he knew this tactic worked to keep me involved longer. 

“Do you see this container?” he said, coming into the living room. 

I was reading a book, nowhere near his domain. I had conditioned myself to ignore his inquiries because this was the starting point of the marathon that was about to take place. 

I made the mistake of looking up. He was holding a plastic margarine tub. Our mom was a survivor of the Great Depression, so anything toxic like that was used for leftovers or a spare set of keys. Whatever she could think of to put in one, it was never thrown away.

I saw him swallow and blink a few times as he said,

“This is all some people will get for Christmas this year.” He cupped it in his hands like it was valuable.

“What?” I said, breaking my code of silence. That is all it took to get the party started. 

“Some people, Chris, will only get this under their tree.”

That’s when I saw the tears form in his eyes. I blame him for my forehead wrinkles that began in my pre-teens. 

“Isn’t it so…” he cleared his throat and let the drips fall. “Isn’t it awful? Someone will get this as a gift this year, and that’s going to be it.”  He broke into a complete bawling session worthy of a funeral. The Academy Awards had missed their opportunity for best actor. 

His skills didn’t stop with sorrow. 

“Let’s fight in slow motion,” he suggested one time.

“What is that?”

“We throw punches at each other, but you don’t really hit the other person. You go slow, so no one gets hurt.” 

That sounded like a fantastic idea to me. I could take swings and get out my frustration without injuring either of us. 

In the basement, far from where my mom could see, we began to go around in a circle, with fists raised and jabbing toward one another. It was all going along as planned until I moved in the direction of one his fists striking me right on my nose. I dropped my arms and looked into his frightened eyes. The blood began to pour out of a nostril. 

I didn’t realize he was capable of moving so fast. He did everything at half the pace of the rest of the world. 

“Get into my room!” he demanded as I saw the bright red blood on my palm, signaling the wail he knew was about to erupt. 

He pushed me onto his bunk bed and ran into the bathroom to get a tissue. I got up to find my mom, a registered nurse, but he blocked me before I could. 

“Sit down! Put this up your nose!”  He was whisper yelling. “Shh! Be quiet!”

Had I known the punishment he would have received, I would have screamed at the top of my lungs, but he looked so scared that I followed his orders. 

“See? You’re fine. It’s stopping.” 

I sniffed a few times and tasted the blood go down the back of my throat.

“Pinch your nose. That will help.”  He had suddenly gotten his medical license. He ran back into the bathroom and brought another wad of toilet paper. Moving quickly wasn’t usual, so I knew he was terrified. I heard him flush the evidence on one of his trips there and back.

Eventually, the bleeding stopped, and he was out of the woods. 

It was one of only a handful of times that he and I started laughing about how stupid we looked. 

His most outstanding performance came in the summer.

A group of girls were at our house, fangirling over him. He was born with the ability to drum, and like Ringo from the Beatles, the same peers who thought he was amazing as a police officer ranked him highly as an international musician. 

“Do you want to try?” he asked one of them, handing over his sticks. Barely able to keep her knees from buckling, she walked up to him, and he gave her tips on how to play. One by one, they were warmly welcomed to his set.

I knew what was coming as I observed.

“Chris should play,” one of them said.

“I am out of time for today, but maybe next time.”

He shot me a shark teeth grin because he never let me near his drumset. It was covered with a cloth when he wasn’t playing, and if he ever caught me near it, I knew I would be in trouble. Whatever that meant, I didn’t want to find out.

After the drum lesson, he decided it would be fun to scare all of us. 

For some reason, his performance in horror was also one of his strong points. I would be watching tv, and he would enter the room and stand in front of me to block my view, giving a long-winded speech about nonsense. In the middle of his talk, he would stop, appear to see something over my head that was terrifying, and begin to play the role.

“Chris! It’s coming! I can’t stop it!” He would lower his voice as if to warn me not to move and upset the unseen monster approaching. 

The first time this happened, I fell for it and whipped my head around, jumping up to protect myself. He walked away, throwing his head back, laughing.   The next time, I steeled myself mentally, trying to ignore his expressions of panic because what if this time he wasn’t faking? What if there was a hideous creature sneaking up to devour me? I reasoned that he wouldn’t care, so why bother moving? 

I caught him off guard once and did it back to him. He never did it again. 

“I am going to build a haunted house,” he announced that day after enthralling them with his drumming. In their eyes, he was the perfect brother. 

He went into a back room where my parents kept a giant freezer. He shut the door while we waited outside, listening to him bang objects around. He taped a note to the door:

Knock Before Entering

A brave girl tapped lightly on the door, and it swung open with a creaking sound accompanying it. He had shut off all the lights. I remember her turning and looking at me for advice. I had been in that room a million times, but with it dark, it appeared to be a new addition. 

She mustered up the courage and went in while the door automatically shut behind her. That sent a wave of fear through the entire group. His engineering skills were better than I thought.

Each took their turn, and as usual, I was last. I followed the instructions, and I was allowed to enter. The sound of a drum reverberated off the walls. The space was small so that I could feel it in my chest. Tucked away underneath the stairs, he was seated, banging on a brown plastic wastebasket. To add to his costume, he had taken a towel off the clotheslines where my mom hung the wash to dry. Wrapped around his head, looking like a swami, he pretended to be a mind reader.

From where I stood, it was low budget with a single light bulb burning.

“Enter,” he said. I was pretty much in.

He made moaning sounds like he was summoning the dead while he struck the wastebasket. Mr. Amazing had not thought about a hot light source melting the plastic container he was beating on, causing it to smoke. Jumping up, he tried to put it out before it became an inferno. His future was looking bleak.

I assumed my role as the runner.

“Mom!” I yelled up the stairs with all my friends watching. “Bob is setting the house on fire!”

I heard the stomping of feet in the kitchen above. I moved away before she ran me over. 

Running into the dark, she was unaware of the ropes he had used to make the door open and shut. Her neck got caught, so she began to claw her way to freedom. The smell of smoke drifted out to where I was with the rest of the audience. 

“Bob! What are you doing?” she screeched, somewhat constricted. Alfred Hitchcock had never directed or produced such a work. It was as if a snake had wrapped itself around her throat.

Unsure how he fixed the problem, it was rare to see him subjected to her wrath, but it was her favorite trash bin with a gaping hole in the bottom. Between coughing from the smoke and the choking of the ropes, she let him have it.

While dealing with him and all of his antics, he taught me that fear is temporary. Just throw a switch, and it can be transformed into laughter. What appeared to be so scary ended up backfiring and became a comedy.

Hooked

Posted on by Christine

“This is how you cast your line.”

With a smooth fluid motion, he brought the rod over his head and flung it out toward the water.  His bobber hit with a small plop.

He handed me a rod after he put a minnow on for me.  I couldn’t bear to do that part. Looking behind me to make sure no one was there as he had instructed, I held down the big white button and then released it as I made the forward motion just like he had.  My bobber hit the water with more force, however.

“You did okay, but your minnow came off. Bring it in and you can do it again. You can’t do it so hard.”

He rebaited the hook, and I tried again but this time consciously with less arm power behind it.

We were at my uncle’s cabin that sat on a lake that was so clear you could see the sand on the bottom. Fishing off the dock was just as good as a boat because the water housed many crappies, sunnies and walleyes that swam by in large schools.

Just as he had taught my three older brothers to fish, he was passing the ability on to me. For my first few attempts, he stayed close by keeping careful watch as I tried to do as he had said. For eleven years old,  I thought I caught on quickly. I only had a few mishaps of releasing the line too early and getting it caught in the weeds behind me on shore.  A few other attempts left my bait going airborne until I learned control.

When he was satisfied that I could handle myself, he went back into the house. My brother, Bob, was on a dock next to my uncle’s so he thought he could leave and have my sibling supervise me.

“I need you to bait the hook,” I pleaded.

“You have to learn sometime,” he answered without looking at me.

“I don’t like doing it.”

“Too bad.”

He wasn’t about to budge from his spot on his dock beside mine.  It would have taken too much physical effort for him to walk the few feet over to help me.

So, with bravery I did the deed and abhorred every second of it.

While practicing my new skill, my cousin came and stood by me. I wasn’t thrilled with him invading my space, but it wasn’t in my nature to be unkind to him. Whenever we visited our relatives, I felt like he clung to me too much, and he threw temper tantrums over the slightest mishaps.  I never knew when the kid was going to sound off like an alarm without warning so he made me slightly edgy.

He started asking me a bunch of questions that I only half listened to.  I was trying to concentrate on casting and getting it right.  Too many times my minnow was sailing through the air forcing me to reload and try again.  I was determined to learn and show my dad how good I was.

I reeled in my line. I made sure I carefully extended my right arm over my cousin’s head before jerking into a cast.  Even with the careful, deliberate movement, I saw my bait fly over his head.  Then, he started to wail like a wounded animal.

I yanked on my line thinking maybe I had gotten it stuck on the weeds behind us on the shore.  Every time I pulled he screamed bloody murder.  I cranked on the line again and felt much resistance.  This felt different than when I had gotten hung up on something before.  This was quite the puzzle until he bellowed,

“MY EAR!”

I glanced at him to figure out what all the fuss was about and saw the hook securely planted in his big earlobe.  In my defense, the child did not have petite ears.

“Why is he crying?” my brother yelled over.

Great.  Now he takes an interest in what I am doing, I thought.

“I don’t know.”

I gulped at the sight of my handiwork in body piercing.

“Did you hook him?” my brother asked.

He cried louder.

“I will help you.  Just hold still,” I said.  I was trying to quiet him down so the adults wouldn’t come running.

“Did you really hook him in the ear?” my brother asked again from his dock.  I could tell he was trying not to laugh.

I ignored him and carefully removed the source of pain without saying anything about what I was doing.

“Is that better?” I asked hopefully.

“NO!  It still hurts.”

“Let me see,” I said.

It was a very small hole with a spot of blood that was visible.

“I want my mom!” he suddenly yelled.

“Wait.  Let’s just see how it feels,” I suggested before he ran off half crazed and got me into trouble.

I imagined my fishing privileges being revoked if word got out that I had actually impaled him.

I dipped my hand into the frigid water and put it on his ear. I had to come up with something quick. I didn’t know how long I could hold him there.

“You know what?  I think a bee stung you.”

“Really?”

His glasses were fogged up and he was breathing heavily.  He wasn’t at the height of health for a six year old.  He was as round as he was tall and easily got winded just from walking up a set of stairs. Sweating came easily for him and his bright red cheeks were an evident sign that he was in distress.

“Ya.  I think it flew right in and stung you on the ear!  It’s gone now though.  I got it away from you.”

“You did?”

“Yes.  Does it feel better?”

“A little bit.  It doesn’t hurt as much.”

He stopped crying and mopped his face with the back of his pudgy hand.

“I am going to go tell that I got stung by a bee!” He huffed and puffed his way off the dock and ran as best as he could toward the cabin.

“Did you tell him he got stung by a bee?” my brother yelled over.  “That is hilarious!  He actually believed you!”

No longer able to hold in his amusement he began to laugh loudly.

“Shut up!” I said as I followed behind my cousin.

By the time I got to the house, he had told all the adults.

When I walked in the door, I was questioned immediately.

“Did he get stung by a bee?”

I took a slight breath and nodded affirmatively.

When he walked past me his ear was barely pink and almost back to normal.  I had just lied myself into a situation that I didn’t have to.

“I think it will be just fine,” my mom said.  “He seems to be okay.”

I inwardly sighed.  As long as he thought he got stung by a bee and so did everyone else, I was off the..well..I was in the clear.

I returned to the dock, picked up my rod and tried again.

“Does everyone think he got stung by a bee?” my brother asked.

“Yes,” I said.

The fly in the ointment!  My brother knew the truth.

“They don’t know you lied?”

“No.”

I tried to preoccupy myself with the waves rolling up to the shore.

“I do.”

It was left at that, and I thought the incident was over, but I was about to be introduced to a concept that I didn’t understand.  Blackmail.

The next day, as usual, my brother did something to me that was not to my liking.  When I was about to let my mom know, he whispered,

“Remember?  The bee sting?”

If I stepped one toe in my mom’s direction to tell on him, he would spill the beans about my cousin’s ear!

The tightness in my chest at the thought of being exposed was enough to freeze me in place.  In that instance, I was lured into his scheme.

One night, about six months into his game, I was on my way to let my mom know that he had just done something again to upset me.  As I turned to leave, he whispered,

“Remember?” He had shortened it to one code word.  No longer did he need to explain like in the beginning. We both were clear on what he was saying.

I suddenly started yelling at the top of my lungs,

“I don’t care!  Tell her!  Tell her everything!”

Months of this torture had built up inside of me. While I was keeping my mouth shut, he was able to say and do whatever he wanted to me.  I decided in that moment to take back my power and face the punishment that I should have received months prior.

My mom heard all the commotion and said,

“What is going on?”

I ran up the stairs before he could and found her at the table making out her grocery list.  The words gushed out of me.

“Remember that time last summer when I said a bee stung Noel on the ear?  I lied.  I accidentally hooked him with my fishing line.  Bob knew the truth and has held it over my head since then. Every time I was going to come tell you something, he would stop me and tell me he was going to tell that I lied.”

Her eyes turned into a tight squint.

“Robert! Get up here now!” She had used his legal first name.  Trouble!

Her voice reverberated through my chest like one of those huge sonic booms that you hear on the Fourth of July.

I watched him slump up the stairs.

This actually wasn’t going in his favor, and it surprised me.

“Is this true?  Have you been blackmailing your sister all this time?  I don’t allow that in my house!”

That was the first time I had heard the term. I may not have been wise to the vocabulary back then, but the experience was enough for me to never forget.

He admitted to his wrongdoing and was sent to his room.  For once, he had come to find out that he wasn’t always going to be on her good side.  To tell you the truth, I was shocked that she treated him how she did.

She turned to me and said,

“Don’t ever let anyone do that to you.  First, tell the truth and don’t lie.  Second, if you have something to say, then say it.  Don’t let another person ever have that much control over you.”

“Okay,” I replied.

I waited for my sentencing, but there wasn’t any.  She figured I had gone through enough months of emotional turmoil at his dark bidding.

Many years later, as an adult, her message to me still rings true.  Whether it is a relative, a scary financial situation or an unhappy existence in a workplace, do not let anyone or anything hold you hostage.  If anything, go to God and tell the truth so that you can have the help you need and live free.  Unload the burden from your heart, and let your honest prayers be the beginning of you no longer being hooked.

 

hooks

 

(On a side note, the next time we went fishing, and my brother and I were fishing on separate docks, I overextended my cast and hooked him in the palm of his hand.  His yelps could be heard for miles.  My dad actually laughed and said we needed to work more on my technique.)

 

 

 

Oh, Brother!

Posted on by Christine

He would lay down in the middle of my bedroom, stare up at my ceiling and burp.

“Get out!” I would say repeatedly, but he would not budge. Of course, he generally did this when my parents had left and we were home alone.

I never knew when he would show up as I contently played with my toys in my room. As a last ditch effort to remove him from my sanctuary and return to a state of peace, I would threaten,

“If you don’t leave I’m going to go into your room and touch all your stuff!”

When the verbal warning wouldn’t work, I would race down the stairs, turn on the light and begin to loudly proclaim,

“I am touching your stuff!”

I would make a lot of noise near his beloved train collection so he would think I was smashing and destroying all of them. That usually did the trick. I would hear him get to his feet, yell at me to get out of his room, while trying to get down the stairs to see what I was doing. I would purposely, and carefully, move his items just to make sure I could escape and go back to where I had been enjoying myself. By rearranging the layout he would be preoccupied while I ran out the door.

This was just one of many feuds the two of us were constantly engaged in. Anytime I had friends over, he would make them swoon by playing his drums and let them try.   Then, when it came to me, the session would suddenly end.

“Your brother is SO cool,” they would say.

REALLY?! I would think.

This was the guy who would sneak behind me while I was watching tv and squirt me with an empty glue syringe filled with water. When I would turn around, he would be way across the room safe enough to run at a moment’s notice. Yet, he never ran, but just stood there laughing while my hair dripped down the back of my shirt.

I was subjected to his horrible sense of humor regarding bathroom smells, his talk of earwax, bad breathe and every other disgusting topic I had ever imagined.  Not to mention dodging the wet dish towels he attempted to snap me with, and his favorite  saying as he held a clump of my hair from the back of my head,

“Do you want me to pull one time time up, or two times down?”

What a great choice to have.  I always went with the one that would be over the quickest.

There usually wasn’t a day that went by where he wouldn’t do something to hurt me such as tripping, pushing or slapping, and when I would yell for him to stop, I would get sent to my room for being too loud leaving him to point and laugh as I got into trouble. Did I mention that every year on his birthday my mom would make him cupcakes and he would proceed to not only devour the cake, but then chew up the wrapper and spit it at me?  Again, he thought this was hilarious.

So, when my friends all gushed over how great he was, I didn’t.  In fact, I hated him.

I walked by the kitchen one day to hear him say to our mom,

“Chris hates me.”

My mother, coming to my defense said,

“Oh, no, she doesn’t.  She is a Christian.  I have raised her not to hate anyone.”

I paused in the doorway and said as loud as I could,

“No!  I do hate him!  He is mean to me!”

She went on to try to convince me that I really didn’t hate him, but I just kept saying,

“No.  I hate him.”

“See?  She hates me!”

Well, who wouldn’t?

I discovered one evening that maybe my mother was right about my true feelings.

My brother didn’t like to wash dishes, and I was well aware of this.  When we would be asked while eating dinner who was going to wash and who was going to dry, I would quickly say,

“Dry!”

He never was faster verbally than me, and it was my only advantage over him.

“Ok.  Bob you wash. Chris you dry.”

And on this particular night, the dreadful duty had once again fallen on him.

He moaned while he ate, and I felt downright giddy that I had done something small to make him suffer.

He departed after he finished his meal, I went to my room and my mom began clearing and rinsing the dishes.  As usual, he began banging on his drums downstairs while listening to music with his headphones on. My floor vibrated with every slam, bang, crash as he worked his drumsticks. After awhile, I heard my mom yell from the top of the stairs,

“Bob!  Come do the dishes!”

Of course, she had to repeat herself and then make the trek down because he couldn’t hear her.  Or, he was ignoring her completely.

When she came back up, I walked into the kitchen and grabbed the white sack flour dish towel.  I stood by the drying rack waiting for him.  She methodically wiped down the stove, removed all the burners, and scoured so deeply she did not see him at the top of the stairs.  He walked toward the sink, and he was breathing in a peculiar way.  Sweat ran down his forehead from exerting himself so hard while playing.

He put one finger in the water and said,

“That’s hot!”

My mother, a registered nurse, would run the faucet until the steam was thick like a fog.  Not a single germ would survive the process.

While still engaged in her stove scrubbing, she said without looking up,

“Start washing.”

She had tired of his antics of not wanting to be near water.  He had such an aversion to it that she had caught him one time in the bathroom sitting outside of the tub filling it while pretending to be bathing.  When he went swimming, he never got wet!  It was a mystery to her and my dad for years.

“This is so hot,” he whined again as he immersed one hand in.

“Start washing,” she said again.  I saw his second hand slip in.

“I don’t feel so good,” he replied.

He took both hands out of the water and began walking towards the living room.  His balance was off as he wobbled and ran into the refrigerator.  I stepped back so he wouldn’t run into me.  His pale face didn’t look normal and he wasn’t smiling as if he were joking.

“Bob, wash the dishes,” she repeated.

I saw him bounce to one side of the door frame and then the other like a pinball.  Then, he simply crumpled down to the floor at me feet.  This caught her attention.  She threw down her wash rag and barked,

“Go get your father!”

I didn’t want to step over him so I ran the long way around to the bathroom door where I knew my dad had gone.

“Dad,” I said as I knocked on the door.

No response.  I heard a newspaper page turn.  This wasn’t unusual.  He had retreated, and like trying to get a turtle out of its shell, getting his attention once he had locked himself in was not easy.  Once behind that door, he was a free man away from work, kids and any other responsibility.

“DAD!”  I knocked louder.

No response.

“DAD!”

“Bob!”  I heard my mom yell from the living room.  “Bob! Wake up!”

I felt my chest tighten and my throat was beginning to close from the panic that was starting to engulf me.

I threw all I had into one loud pounding session on the closed door.  I banged with two closed fists.

“DAAAAAADDDD!  DAAAD!  DAAAAD!”

“WHAT?” came the annoyed reply.

“Bob..Bob…Bob…is dead!”  My throat was closing and my tongue wouldn’t work right.

“WHAT?”

I gave one last attempt to try and scream what was happening.

“Bob. Is. DEAD!”

I heard the sound of crumpling newspaper as he scrambled to upright himself and do whatever he had to so he could exit.  The bathroom door was flung open, and a pair of large boxer shorts ran by.

I don’t know how long I stood there frozen until I heard my mom say,

“Where is Chris?”

“You can come out here now. It’s okay,” my dad said.

I slowly peered around the corner into the living room.  I could see my brother sitting upright with his hair going in all directions.

“Bob isn’t dead,” my dad said.

“Who said he was dead?” my mom asked.

“Chris thought he died.”

“No.  He just fainted.”

They both started to laugh as he continued to try and see straight.  He still kept leaning to one side and wasn’t fully himself.

“He just got too hot playing his drums and when he stuck his hand into the hot water, his body couldn’t handle it.  He will be fine,” she assured me.

And, he was.  He went on for many years after to follow me to the bus stop singing annoyingly out of his car window at the top of his lungs, waking me up on the first day of summer vacation just because he didn’t get to sleep in, and burping wetly and loudly into my perfectly groomed hair.  Just for fun.

I found out that my mom had been somewhat right.  Deep in the recesses of my heart, God had planted something so permanent that no matter what he said or did that was unkind to me, I could not hate him.

Before I was born, she went individually to each of the five kids in the family and told them I was on my way.  She was amazed by his response as he was in kindergarten at the time.

He said, “I already know that.  I prayed for a baby to come.”

I found out later that a lot of what he did was to get my attention as I was getting older and he didn’t know how to handle it. Miraculously, we get along now just fine and even laugh about some of the things we did to each other.

Sometimes growing up with a sibling can be quite messy, funny, miserable, unpredictable, frustrating and exhausting.  Often, I am grateful that those days are over. As we celebrate Valentine’s Day this week, I am reminded that hatred can quickly turn to love when God is in the mix. That person you think you cannot stand suddenly can become your best friend.  Just when you think you have it all figured out, you just might not.  Oh, brother!

 

(Bob and me wading in the pool on a hot Minnesota summer day)bob