She leans back against the wall. She’s sideways in her chair in the Nashville restaurant that shares their last name. Jackson’s.
“You two have the same nose! My nose isn’t like yours.”
“What?” “Really?” Two voices across from each other sounded surprised after twenty-something years.
“Yeah, it’s the same nose as Dad’s. I don’t have that nose. I don’t have Mom’s nose either. Where did my nose come from?”
She laughed and smiled.
I laughed and smiled.
I was having dinner with my boyfriend and his two younger sisters. It was my first time meeting the girl with the nose that didn’t quite match the others. I was glad to have finally met both of them. He loved them, and I knew that. He said when he was younger he wasn’t as nice as he could have been and didn’t treat them the way he should have treated someone he loved. But when you’re young, it’s easy to do—to place other people’s feelings aside. But, hopefully, as you mature and grow so do your relationships with the people you love. You grow into the opportunity to love your family and friends the way they should be loved. You treat them with the respect that every human being should be treated with—something like the golden rule. You ignore judging glares or the assumed snickering in public. You stop dreading the small talk question of “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
I have one older brother. He turned 27 in March. It’s a long and complicated story. But here are the high lights: Clay was born three months prematurely with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy to a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old in Mississippi. They had no clue what they were doing. He had a shunt placed in his brain when he was a baby to control the cerebral spinal fluid build-up in his cranial cavity. When he was around six years old, he had his Achilles’ tendon severed because it was too tight. He spent the better part of two years in casts and leg braces. When he was in the 8th grade, his shunt malfunctioned. We (the entire family) spent the next four years traveling back and forth to Nashville from our rural town of Bethpage for hospital visits and surgeries. At the best moments, Clay would want to go to the mall and look at video games. At the worst, he would spend weeks in agonizing pain because the doctors couldn’t get it right. It’s only brain surgery. He was never the same after the half-a-dozen surgeries and years in-and-out of pain. It’s only been in the past year that my parents have been honest in saying to me “Yeah, the doctors at Vanderbilt nearly killed Clay”.
“These are the good years, Mallory” says my father. It’s been nearly ten years since Clay’s last major surgery. Since then I have graduated from high school as valedictorian, finished college with a mechanical engineering degree, started a job with NASA, been to France, been to Turkey, had three tattoos, far too many piercings that have since been removed, and have been blessed in so many ways. Since then Clay has been diagnosed with Autism.
Nearly five years ago, when he was almost 22-years-old, Clay was diagnosed with Autism. No, the extreme but very classic symptoms of Autism didn’t “suddenly appear”; and, yes, it is odd that the diagnosis was so late in life. His behaviors didn’t change as a result of the diagnosis, but how we treated him changed. We no longer tried to place him in this box labeled “normal” where we forced him to go on family vacations that required long car rides or to eat in restaurants that were too busy or too loud for him to enjoy. After spending so many years of him adjusting to the world, finally, we adjusted for him.
Those are the high lights of the past. It is what it is. Now, let’s move on.
My brother and the rest of my family have been my motivation. They have been the driving force behind every responsible decision— choosing engineering instead of art, choosing NASA over the private sector, choosing saving for a 6-month emergency fund instead of… anything else. I don’t regret any of that. I don’t regret any of my decisions. I don’t regret my life. Most of the time.
Most of the time, I am very content with my life. I am happy. I am thankful. I still get upset over morning traffic or spilling coffee on my pants before I even make it into work, but most of the time, I am very content with my life. But some days, I fight back feelings of jealousy, guilt, anger, fear, and sadness. On those days, I think about moving or painting or taking a long, hot bath.
The same laugh bounces through two of my best friends’ voices. They both have stunning blue eyes and incredible intelligence. It is the younger one’s college graduation. I couldn’t be happier for the girl that grew from being “Kelly’s little sister” to “my best friend”. She has worked hard. But as I sit through her graduation while her older sister runs to the bottom of the stands to take her picture, I can’t help but be jealous. I have seen this kind of opportunity of growth with many of my friends. Although the siblings were not the best of friends during middle and high school, when one of them left the house for life after 18, they would rediscover their similarities and embrace their differences. They would become more than siblings but friends. They not only laughed and talked about the times of their youth, but also supported each other for the future ahead.
When I visit my parents’ house, my brother might come out of his room for ten minutes in a weekend. I don’t know any longer how to really interact with my brother. I only know how to tiptoe quietly. I’m jealous that sisters can be best friends and that brothers can give the best advice. I’m jealous that I will never have a little niece or nephew to take pictures with. I’m jealous that I don’t know my brother aside from stories my mother tells me. I’m jealous that we don’t really talk. I feel guilty as though it is my fault.
Every opportunity I have been given, every chance I took that landed me in the sun—I feel guilty of. When I buy new shoes or an outfit, I feel as though I should be starting a long-term savings account to be used on my brother as we both age. When I travel to visit a friend for the day, I think how my mother usually can’t leave the house for more than a few hours at a time without Clay calling and needing something—many times just to hear her voice. I feel guilty that I don’t do more for my family, for my job, for myself. I worry that the reason I have pushed myself so greatly is because when I stand still in my truth, everything catches up. Do more, Mallory.
Release of all hope.
For a better past.
I regret none of my life. My crazy family—autistic brother, overprotective mother, giving stepfather, eccentric father—is better than anything I’ve seen in a movie or TV show. In our own ways, we love and support each other. We are all growing in our relationships. Although I will never be able to have the kind of friendship with my brother as some of my friends have with their siblings, I have been given so much more. I have been given extraordinary talents and time. I have been given motivation and a sense of responsibility that can’t be instilled by a job or a garden. I have been given the opportunity to love and to be loved by the most important people in life—my family. I have been given my brother.
By: Mallory M. Johnston
On: June 25, 2011
[1] This quote is a line from Buddy Wakefield’s “Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars” which he got from Reverend Kathianne Lewis (original source unknown).
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