Oh, Brother!

My first friend, playmate, and confidante was born just as princesses and vampires started Trick-or-Treating. The family story is that I didn’t get to wear the pink and white bunny costume laid out carefully on my parents’ bed because my brother John came a month early and my grandparents didn’t have the key. So, I went as a gypsy instead, and the pictures made my mother cry. I don’t remember any of this because I was still just a baby myself--which means he has been a part of everything I can remember for all my life. We are so different that we could never have been peas in a pod, only the yin to each other’s yang. While I was described as someone who thinks of things to worry about, he had nicknames like “John the Beloved” and “John the Peacemaker.” Very different. He was a cerebral boy who fiercely loved animals and books, an introspective teen who ran hundreds of solitary miles, and a world-traveling young adult who didn’t even have time to grab a pair of shoes before rushing me to the hospital where his first beloved niece was born. Even with childhood vision challenges, he was an impressively early reader and, since we are so close in age, he was learning his first book while I was learning mine. Eleanor Clymer’s Benjamin in the Woods is the story of a frontier boy who comes West with his family including, coincidentally, his Uncle John. Somehow, that seems fitting.



Check out what he's doing now:
http://www.shopliftwindchimes.com/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Clymer


http://www.amazon.com/benjamin-woods-wonder-eleanor-clymer/dp/B000O5S7TM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268534707&sr=1-1