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.
She grew up a lot like I did: small, skinny, gawky. Not only did she have the braces, but glasses, too. They always seemed a bit too big for her petite face. Still, as awkward as she was, she had that smile that must've been a mile wide. When I came home for Thanksgiving my freshman year, not really feeling like I fit in at my dorm, she opened the door and smiled. That was all I needed to feel like all of my troubles had been fixed and were far behind me.
After I went to Maryland, I didn't get to see Savy and mom as much as I'd have liked. I was only a few hours away from home in Salisbury, but when you're in college, leaving campus just doesn't cross your mind much.
Savy and I would instant message almost every day, though. I'd ask her and she'd talk about some concert she'd given or class she'd aced, then she would ask me about college. She was incredibly insistent asking about the minutiae of classes and the details of what college life was like. It just seemed like she was already ready to leave high school and get to college.
I'll admit, it was kicking my ass a bit. High school was a breeze, but I'd never had to apply myself like this. The A's and B's of high school had turned into mostly C's in college. I felt like I was letting her down, even more than I felt like I was letting down mom. Mom had this way of always supporting me, even when I could tell she wanted more, but the thought of not living up to Savy's expectations was troubling.
By my sophomore year, I was doing better. My grades were up and I lived in a different dorm, for international students, so there was always lots of interesting stuff was always going on.
Savy was still my best friend, though. She was starting to think about what she wanted to study in college and, like me, she wanted nothing more than to work at NASA. She was more focused on biology, which I was perfectly fine with. The thought of the two of us possibly getting jobs at Goddard, which is just a few miles from the University of Maryland campus, was incredible.
Relationships? Yeah, I had some.
My freshman year, in the spring, I dated an older girl. She was a senior and I think more than anything, I just made her feel better about herself. She could call me up at 1am and I'd trudge across campus to her dorm to help her study. The sad thing was, I didn't even get anything, physically or emotionally.
My junior year, I dated a girl in one of those relationships that feels really serious when you're on campus, but as soon as you're off campus for a holiday or what not, it feels like it's not really a relationship.
My senior year, I flew solo. I had enough stress to think about with graduating, starting my master's degree, and finding a job to support myself.
I did actually have my first (and only) one night stand my senior year. I wasn't really the type of guy for that, but it just kind of happened. A friend had invited me to a party on campus during spring break.
By that time, I'd filled out my frame and thanks to a growth spurt my freshman year, I stood a respectable 5'11" and 160 lbs. I wasn't really muscular, but the years of wrestling had kept me lean. I'd finally grown out my wrestling buzz cut into an unruly mop of sandy brown hair that was getting more popular at that time. Personally, I've always thought I was relatively average looking, but more than a few girls who were friends commented on my eyes, which had an outer ring of blue that transitioned to green and then gold near my pupil.
At the party, I was actually planning on leaving when the main group in the living room broke out a bong. I didn't object, per se, it just wasn't really my thing. I ended up sitting on the stairs drinking a beer before leaving when a girl came and sat next to me. We talked for awhile and found each other pleasant enough that she invited me up to her room and I went with her.
A few days after graduation, I'd packed everything I owned in the back seat of my old Toyota and headed across the Bay to look forward to a month off before heading back to Maryland. I'd landed a summer internship at Goddard, but I had to recharge. Maybe I'd make a good enough impression to get offered a full-time position on the program I most wanted to be on, the James Webb Space Telescope.
I pulled into mom's driveway a bit after 11pm. The house was dark, but the flickering of light in the living room told me that someone was watching TV, or more likely, sleeping in front of the TV. I opened the door and dragged a few bags inside, before heading to the living room to see who was up. Curled up on the sofa, I saw a pile of long, dark hair sticking out from under a throw blanket. I plopped down next to her and smacked her on the leg.
She bolted upright. I was shocked, that wasn't my sister! She must've had a friend staying over who didn't want to use my room.
