It’s my big brother’s birthday today! Before I started therapy  a year ago, I always assumed my brother wasn’t anxious because he’s so gregarious. He got my mom’s extrovert genes and, because I couldn’t talk to strangers without agony, I assumed Alan was just a fundamentally happy guy.

Now, of course, I realize that he got the family anxiety as much as I did, but it comes out in different ways. He is a happy guy, and so loyal to the ones he loves, generous and kind–but he also feels things deeply, worries as much as any of us, and just wants things to be perfect. (Brother, I feel you.)

He has the added worries of being a parent, which I honestly can’t imaging coping with, and he does such a good job with his son, who adores him. He lives much closer to my parents than I do so he took on the lion’s share of visiting them over the years, especially now that Mom is gone.

He has the mind of an engineer and the curiosity of a historian, an encyclopedic knowledge of anything mechanical. He does all the cooking for the family and is a better chef than I am, much more patient and willing to try new things.

My brother is a remarkable man who’s doing a great job and I’m proud to not only know him but call him family. Happy birthday, Alan. I love you.

This birthday appreciation post is tricky to write, because I know my dad will say, “I don’t need any special sympathy. Other people go through this, too.” But I want to tell the world how strong he is and how much I admire him for what he did for Mom.

We all helped with Mom’s illness but he was the one who had to carry the most, do the most, be the strongest for the longest time. He was at Mom’s side every minute. He handled appointments and pill schedules and injections and talked about making it to their 50th wedding anniversary. I don’t think “devotion” even begins to cover it; I can only hope I’ll be able to show (and receive) that kind of love.

Now he’s doing grocery shopping and pruning Mom’s roses and just…keeping going. The endurance required to do that in the smoking crater of his old life just staggers me.

He would always say to Mom during chemo, “You’re the strongest woman I know. You can do this.” In many ways, what he’s doing now requires even more strength. I always knew my dad was strong, but I didn’t know he was this strong.

Happy birthday, Dad. I love you.

Not only is he enduring, he’s finding some little things to enjoy: He’s getting into programming and running model trains.

My nephew is EIGHT today! He’s very much a kid now, not a little boy, but he is such a delight.

As I’ve said before, you can’t put anything over on him. If you show him the why behind something and let him see it, then he’s just fine with it–but he’s not about to accept “because I said so” as a reason for anything.

He already has a very specific sense of style, just like his grandma. I’m standing by in case he ever needs help with his curly hair (I didn’t know what to do with mine until I was in my 20s) but he is very clear that he likes his “Einstein hair” just as it is. He also loves color; when he was at my house recently, he picked up some yarn in turquoise and royal blue. I had to stop and admire the pairing and think, “Huh, I never would have put those together, but they really work.”

You can see the love of color in his art, too, where he takes after his dad and grandpa. He also loves to engineer things (like his mom) and he’s always reading.

Happy birthday, Skyler! We all love you so much.

As I start 39 and 2019, I am not even sure how to feel.

On one hand, I’ve discovered powerlifting. I’ve discovered therapy and anti-anxiety medication. I’ve stopped drinking. I wake up happy, I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’m learning how to be a better daughter, sister, and partner.

On the other, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer last year. It’s as if the news has tied my family to a train track with no hope of  escape. The train is barreling down on us this year.

So instead of a phrase to aspire to or a goal to accomplish, this year’s theme for my life is a promise to myself and my family. If I’ve learned nothing else from therapy and the gym, it’s that things can hurt like hell and you will still survive them. They even stop hurting. Eventually.

We will be ok. We have our tools. We have each other. “And even semi-OK can be a miracle.”

It was the best weekend because it was sunny, I finished all the top secret knitting and sewing, and most importantly, it was Doc’s birthday!

After nearly five years, I am finally accepting that he just doesn’t like being the center of attention (on a birthday or otherwise) so I will merely say that he is the best hiking companion, the best Toby chin-scratcher, and just really the best.

I always default to Carl Sagan with him because he reminds me of Sagan so much–deeply curious, unfailingly kind, enthusiastically rational–so here’s my favorite quote that applies to Doc: “In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch” with him.

It’s my sister-in-law’s 40th birthday today! I’ve always thought that she’d be the one to have around in the apocalypse–her skill set is vast and varied and covers everything from making rockets to growing medicinal herbs. She can grind wheat into flour, bake you bread with it, and probably set a bone if you needed it. My grandmother once said, “She’s a hard worker” and from a Midwestern farm woman, there is no greater praise.

She’s teaching her son all these skills but she’s also teaching him how to be a compassionate, rational human (like herself), and that’s wonderful to see. Being on vacation with them really gave me a chance to see her interact as a parent; watching someone you’ve known for a long time expand to fill the role of “Mom” is pretty incredible, especially since she’s doing such a good job with it.

She’s dry and funny and loves oddball stuff like I do, and is just so fun to be around. Happy birthday, Altair!

It’s my brother’s 42nd birthday today!

Like I wrote last year, he is extremely curious, extremely knowledgable, and extremely talented in the kitchen (he makes hamburger buns from scratch!), but what I’ve been thinking about this year is how strong his sense of “right” is–that moral compass you wish more people had.

Honestly, if you are prone to (over)thinking like a novelist, considering how one could see things this way OR that way, his sense of rightness can almost be overwhelming. He can’t understand why people don’t see it as clearly as he does; he just knows how things should be and whenever possible, he makes them that way. For example:

When my house was being built, we visited the site one evening. The general contractor had left a raccoon trap set. We both saw it, but before I could even start to wring my hands, my brother picked up the empty trap and tossed it into the construction dumpster.

I, who liked both the contractor AND the raccoons, worried that maybe the contractor would get in trouble with his boss and have to pay for losing the trap? Maybe we could just disable it? And the words weren’t even fully out of my mouth before he said, “No, Karen, traps are awful. It doesn’t matter if he gets in trouble, he shouldn’t have set it.”

And he was right.

He is strong and opinionated and has been right many, many more times. I’m proud that such a good man is my brother. Happy birthday, Alan. I love you.

Yesterday’s sea shanty post was mostly for my dad, who also knows shanties and sings them and has, his whole life, dragged a “great weight” of some kind or another: Being responsible for a brother. Being the family breadwinner. And now, the weight of taking care of my mom as she deals with cancer, chemo, and (soon) surgery.

My dad did not grow up in a time of sentiment, so showing any vulnerability or “weakness” is hard. I think it’s hard for him to even see it in other people, because, to him, you just deal with whatever great weight you’re dragging. Sure, you could complain about it, but you’ll still have to move that weight, so just keep going.

I know Mom being sick has been hard on him–it’s been hard on all of us, but he’s the one there with her the most. But in his mind, his job is not to complain, not to fail, not to be weak. To drag the weight, no matter what it is.

So I just want to tell him today, “You are doing a beautiful job, Dad. Happy birthday. I love you.”

It’s my little nephew’s seventh birthday today!

He has a lot of depth to him. I subscribe to the idea of reincarnation (as a dilettante) and I remember thinking when I first saw him, “Oh, he’s done this before.”

Watching him grow up has just reinforced that for me. Before he could talk, he was trying to communicate. (I still remember a pantomime when he was about two, “telling” me how he got a splinter in his foot and Grandma and Grandpa took it out.) Now that he can read and write, he loves books and keeping his journal. You tell him something and you can see him weigh it, digest it, judge it (and often dismiss it–you can’t put anything over on this kid).

At the same time, he’s fearless about a lot of things–not in the way little kids are fearless because they don’t know any better, but because he’s thought about the consequences and decided that whatever he’s pondering is worth the risk.

He’s curious like his dad and determined like his mom, which means you need to have a really sound reason and/or compelling explanation for getting him to do something he doesn’t want to do.

He loves his Grandpa especially, I think because they can be so silly together. I feel like I’m the coolest person in the world when he asks me to play with him and I treasure every note and card that says “I love you.”

In short, he’s just a delightful little human and we’re all so lucky to get a round at this life together.