I was eight when my family got a new addition.
When I came home from school one day in the spring, my mother was sitting on the sofa. Her face was red and there was a pile of tissues on the floor next to her. She asked me to sit down.
"Mike, I have something to tell you. You're going to have a little sister."
I remember being really shocked at this. You see, my parents had been fighting for as long as I could remember. They never fought in front of me, but I still knew. At the best of times, they were coldly indifferent to each other's existence. At the worst, I would sit in my room listening to them shouting in their room. It's like I was numb to the world, because home is where everything should be safe, happy, and comfortable.
I couldn't complain about safety; my family's home was beautiful with a huge yard, woods to run and play around in, and I even had a great dog to play Frisbee with. Happy was another thing altogether, though. I couldn't really figure out why they were having a little girl when they didn't even seem to like each other very much. I knew what divorce was; many of my friends had divorced parents. Maybe this was my parents' way of trying to find something to share and stay together over.
"You're gonna have a baby, mom?"
"No, not exactly. But your father and I know a little girl and... " She sniffed, "... we love her very much, so she's going to come live with us."
"Do you mean... adopt? Jimmy's adopted, you know, from another country."
"Yes, that's about it. Are you excited to have a sister?"
"Well, I dunno. Maybe."
"It'll be okay."
A week later, I was out in the yard and my dad pulled into the driveway. He got out, waved at me, and went around to the back door. When he stepped away from the car, he had a little girl in his arms.
"Mike, come here. I want you to meet your sister, Savannah. She's four."
I ran over and tried to peek at her, but she buried her face in dad's neck.
Later that night, I guess she'd had a nap and was feeling better. She was sitting at the table and my dad was feeding her dinner. I had to admit, she was an adorable kid. I asked my dad where she was from. He said that she was from Virginia, close to our home in Maryland, but her family was from the Philippines.
Little Savannah looked up at me and smiled the widest smile I'd ever seen. I was eight, but my heart melted. Maybe we would have some happiness in the house.
Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. I tried to be a good kid. I did my chores. I got great grades. I took care of my sister as best I could. I called her Savy and we'd play in the yard. Sometimes, I'd bring out all of her stuffed animals and set 'em up like a parade. She was my sister and I'd do anything for that smile. Still, it wasn't enough.
I was ten when my parents divorced.
I think by that point, I was so resigned to it, that it barely affected me. My dad was almost always away from home anyway, because he was working. My mom did the best she could with the two of us. I don't think I saw them say more than four words a night to each other. No, the divorce wasn't a surprise and I didn't feel the need to lash out.
Still, what did surprise me is that after the divorce, my dad didn't just move out, he moved all the way to Oregon. Birthday cards and Christmas presents were all I ever got from him, even those tapering off over the years.
I think back and he just didn't have it in him to be the family man. He needed to throw himself into whatever he wanted to be doing at the time. Sometimes, that was work. Other times, it was flying all over the country to see a new city or some such. Either way, he didn't give much thought to family and after that, we didn't give much thought to him.
Mom, sis, and me... we'd be all right. We moved to a smaller house with a smaller yard, but that was okay, because it was still our home.
It's pretty easy for an older brother to dismiss a younger sister, especially when there's four years between them, but I didn't.
I adored Savy and I couldn't even fully explain why. She was just... incredibly special. There was some undefinable quality about her that allowed us to avoid the normal older brother versus younger sister annoyances. I didn't just spend time with her because I had to in order to help out mom, I spent time with her because she was my sister and I cared about her. I wanted everything to be right for her. I wanted her to always be smiling.
After I did my homework, I sat down with her and read books or tried to teach her something. She was unbelievably intelligent. We'd be sitting there and she'd have her face plastered to my old second grade math workbook, even though she was only in kindergarten. She seemed to be just as empathetic as she was intelligent, too. When I got pushed around at school by bigger kids, which happened more often than I'd like to admit thanks to my small stature, she'd come sit by me on the sofa and just cuddle up against me to make me feel better.
That's how it went for us. My mom was still as awesome as ever, providing for us, giving us a great home, and being there when we scraped our knees, had a bad day at school, or needed help with, well, anything. I have no idea how she managed it, keeping us in a comfortable home as a single parent, maintaining a steady career, and always managing to find time to spend with us every single day.
By the time I was in high school, I'll admit that my attentions had turned to other girls than just my mom and sister. I mean, hey... I was a teenage boy. Still, I was a bit gawky, so the attention paid back to me was a lot more limited than I'd have preferred.
I'd started wrestling in middle school, so I could handle myself, but even as a junior in high school and with five years of wrestling, I was a small guy. I didn't break 5' until my senior year, when a small growth spurt got me up to 5'5" and even then, I only wrestled at 125 lbs. that year. I was, charitably, lanky. And no, wearing braces from 8th to 11th grades didn't help.
I did date a girl pretty seriously during my senior year. Jamie was a cute girl, blonde and all-American. She was a year behind me in school, but that didn't much matter. We went to prom together in the spring and were still going strong in the summer. By that time, I'd started a job working for a small computer repair shop. I'd take off early in the afternoon to pick up Jamie. We'd go to the pool sometimes, but most of the time, we'd go to her home and spend the afternoon in bed. I lost my virginity to Jamie and her to me. It was sweet, awkward puppy love. In short, it couldn't have lasted.
When fall rolled around, I was going to the University of Maryland to study astronomy and physics and Jamie was staying home for her senior year. We broke up. I regretted the way it happened, that as soon as I was in College Park, I didn't even try to make a long distance relationship work. Sometimes, that's just the way it is when you're young and away from home for the first time.
Meanwhile, Savy was blowing everyone away at school. Not only was she a straight-A student, but she'd skipped 4th grade and was a talented violinist. She had started school a year later than normal because of the adoption, so skipping a grade brought her in line with the other students her age.
