Brothers and Sister
I have two brothers and a sister. The older of my brothers, Todd was born in 1966. My sister, Mitzi came along in 1968 and our youngest brother, Matt, was born to my Dad and his second wife in 1974 and grew up apart from us in southern (or lower) Alabama. The rest of us grew up in North Carolina except for a circuitous route around the south during our Dad's Army days during the Vietnam War. All four of us have two biological kids each, a boy and a girl apiece, although I have a bonus daughter from an earlier marriage. I also have a grandchild older than all of their youngest kids, early bloomer vs. late bloomers.
For three people with distinctly different personalities and interests, Todd, Mitzi and I share a lot of similarities. At one time we were all coincidentally driving the same model car and working as technical writers. We are all voracious readers, a trait our mother passed on to us. The two of them both matriculated at our state's flagship university, UNC-Chapel Hill. We are all members of the same political party.
Todd went to high school at the North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics and started his education in Cleveland studying astrophysics before making his way to Chapel Hill where he changed his major to English and qualified for Phi Beta Kappa. He was in a co-ed literary fraternity which had interesting people and parties. He also studied wildlife biology at the University of Georgia, where he told me there were two kinds of students, tree huggers and deer boys (translation= environmentalists and hunting enthusiasts wanting to manage resources). Through the years he's worked for various non-profits and today manages a kayak and nature tour concern in beautiful Marin County, California near Pt. Reyes National Seashore.
Mitzi is the only one of us to live at home with Mom until she graduated. She was a history major at Chapel Hill and later got her master's degree in divinity from Duke. She's wicked smart. Always a kindhearted and nurturing person, she felt called to ministry and several years ago was ordained as a pastor in the United Methodist Church where she serves today. She led her congregation through a divisive time in its history when the denomination split over ordaining members of the LGBT community. She was, of course, on the side of goodness and light, as she is on all major issues. Some of her writing on race relations during the early days of the BLM movement was as powerful as anything I read on the subject. Here is a quote from her after someone we know tried to "both sides" Charlottesville:
Blacks marching to call attention to centuries of systemic oppression, violence, and injustice is in no way analogous to white supremacists aligning themselves with Nazis and asserting that anyone who doesn't look like them is unfit to be Americans or to live in this nation. There is a huge difference between saying "We matter." And saying, "You don't matter.
Matt is a physician's assistant and leads the medical team at a government training facility in Virginia. He and his wife both have master's degrees in athletic training from Mississippi State University. He's worked for the government and the military in a variety of life saving roles all over the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq as a member of the Alabama National Guard. He and his family recently returned from a three-year stint in Athens, Greece where he led the medical team at the US Embassy at the height of the COVID-19 epidemic. He checks in with me regularly and although we have different ways of looking at the world, our bond as brothers is strong.
Having good relations with my brothers and sister makes me happy. We are all different. Todd and I are pretty secular, while Matt and Mitzi are strong Christians. Matt and I are veterans while the other two are not. We support each other in our relationship with our Dad and we watch each other's kids grow up. We don't get to see each other often enough but when we do, it's good times. I wish the same for everyone who has siblings.
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