Gratitude in Waiting

Each semester, I have my students make lists of important people in their lives: “Think of your role models,” I say. “Who is in your life to guide you, someone you would want to be like – for better or for worse, for fun or for serious; who supports your being in school by encouraging you to do your homework and stay on track?” It doesn’t take long for them to come up with a good-sized list of people in their lives: parents, siblings, friends, relatives, neighbors, former teachers, even the occasional “famous” person. I normally sit and write with my students; although, this is one particular exercise I’ve skipped the past couple of years. I’d like to say I don’t know why, or, for no particular reason, but I wouldn’t be telling the whole truth in that. Maybe, for a while I didn’t know why, but this last semester, when I sat to actually try and write my own list, I came face to face with the reason why. The one person I had always considered one of my greatest role models, one of my supporters, someone I could always turn to in good and bad, is no longer that person for me. How it came about – a much longer story than I care to tell, complex with many boring layers that played themselves out over long periods of time. It could just be that old adage, “people change.” But I don’t think it was even that. I’m pretty sure we are both as much the same as we ever have been, just some things came to light that I hadn’t seen before, and once I did, I made the decision that it was not healthy relationship to maintain. It can be a tough relationship break, but even tougher when that person is your own sister.

She was the first born, followed by four younger brothers – all my big brothers. Then came three more girls, me in the middle of them (that makes me seven of eight, if you’re counting it out). I grew up thinking my big sister – (the eldest one, not the one just before me – she was my older sister, but I don’t think I ever referred to her as my “big sister” – although the one younger than me was always my “little sister”) – my big sister was the coolest person I knew. I adored everything about her, and aside from the occasional tensions, can’t remember a time when she ever would have made me spit-raving angry, like I would have been at my little sister (for the dumbest things – like wearing my clothes – you know, girl stuff…). But, because of the age difference between us – nine years, I think, she was out of the house quite early on. She married (another story) and moved into a trailer park. She didn’t go to college and worked waitressing at a diner downtown. She may have had other jobs, but I don’t recall.

Once gone from the home, my attentions turned to my other siblings. I had always paid attention to them anyway, but now more than ever as I began to search for the kind of comfort in adults that children will seek. My four older brothers. This is what I began to realize as I sat with my students and attempted to write my list of important people: My four older brothers. They were the ones that were there with me during my later growing-up years. They were the ones there during all the teen angst and rebellion. They were the ones whose behavior I was watching most carefully as I, too, began to age and need direction in my life. I began to follow them.

The two oldest brothers both went to Michigan Tech to study engineering. I remember the long drive to Houghton during the winter months to visit them, how I wrote letters to my oldest brother telling him how much I missed him and wanted him to come home. He was the one who rode his bike long distances on a whim, and once across state lines to visit a girlfriend (and my father had to retrieve him - not such a good idea to ride through Gary, Indiana). Is it any wonder I became a long-distance cyclist? And the fact that the second youngest brother was a runner – any wonder that I also became a distance runner?

The third brother also went to school, in art, then went on to graduate from an art institute. Of all things, he was my inspiration for becoming a nude model when I later went to college. He had said that models are often difficult to find, but that they are integral to an art student’s education. So I sat, often times teeth chattering, in the drafty drawing rooms in the basement of the university while a dozen students scratched at paper with charcoal. More than this, I also developed a great appreciation for the arts and support the efforts of art students at every opportunity, always with my brother in mind.

And the fourth brother, the one closest to me, I would have to say he had some of the greatest impact in my life. In so many ways, I wanted to be just like him. I switched from playing the violin after middle school to the bass in high school. He was also a bass player. He paved several roads for me in this – giving music lessons, so I gave music lessons; playing with the professional symphony, so too did I. He went on to university, and I followed to that very same university. He studied psychology, and I made it my minor.

College was never a question for me. It wasn’t pushed in my family as I know it is in so many of my students – their parents telling them they WILL go to college, no questions asked. If I had chosen not to attend college, I don’t think there would have been a protest on the part of my parents. In fact, once, I remember my mother telling me that my father hadn’t expected the girls in the family to go to college. His expectation was that we get married and have children. Just as well this wasn’t pushed as equally as college wasn’t. But, knowing that, I have to look back and say that it was my brothers who were my greatest role models. I also have to throw in here and give credit to my older sister (not my big), because she even started attending college classes early, either while she was still in high school or she graduated early and started college, I’m not exactly sure. I just know she was there before her time, and that was a huge encouragement to me as well.

Not only was college not a question, continued college was as well. I would attend two years at the local community college – just as all my brothers and older sister had – and then I would go on to university – just as they all had (or were planning to do). And so I did, as did we all. Seven of us in the family college graduates, some with post graduate degrees.

So now, looking back over the years, and taking new stock in my role models, I wonder what my life would have been like had those four boys not been born there. What if only one had? What if they were all younger brothers? When I consider what the answers to those questions might be, I know for a fact I was very fortunate to have them in my life. I have never before thought to give them this kind of credit, this kind of grateful consideration. As so often seems to happen in our lives, it takes what we perceive as a negative experience to make us realize and appreciate the positives we had not seen before. Of course, we still wish the negative hadn’t happened, but without it, so much more gratitude is left to wait.