The Bond of Siblings

We have been close since he was born. We were born 1 year, 9 months and 16 days apart from each other. We were like Frick and frack… Often times you could find us dressed alike or telling someone we were twins… our made up term, Tropolopical twins (born 1 year, 9 months and 16 days apart), we were very creative…

We would spend our Saturday mornings playing made up games. One in particular was shipwreck… LMBO, I am cracking up recalling this memory. We shared a room and we had bunk beds. You know the bunk beds with the full size bed at the bottom and the twin at the top. We would drape several blankets over the top bunk and pretend we were stranded on an island. We set our room up like a deserted island, using colored grass from our Easter baskets and placing my many stuffed animals around the room… We were pirates. We played for hours until we switched to playing school (which was the living room) or played camping (back in our room again) by draping sheets over the bed and putting a fan in the opening of the bed to blow the sheets up to look like a tent. We would eat marshmallows and tell stories inside the tent. Shaunta, our little cousin would play this with us too. This is how close we were, close enough to not care what others thought of our lame, made up games. We had fun with each other all the time.

We got a kick out of sitting around messing with Lonnie (Cousin) and Donna (sister). They would make us compete against each other in everything. Donna was Rob’s coach and Lonnie was mine… Of course I would always win. Who can remember this part in a song the fastest, or who can get a KO first. Till this day I still remember, “It’s the capital S oh yes I’m fresh N double O P D-O double G Y D-O Double G you See” and can say it flawlessly. For those of you who don’t know that reference it is from Dr. Dre’s song featuring Snoop Dog “Aint Nuthin but a G Thang”.

When we weren’t joking around with Lonnie and Donna, we would sit and jone on each other or pair up and tell Donna she was adopted. Hahahahaha… She is the oldest and would believe us!!!

Too many memories to capture in words, but I can say this… It’s a little clicheish (sp) but, we fit together like gloves. You can’t wear one without the other. We hated being separated and tried to avoid it at all costs. But we grew up and needed our own space. When my sister went to college and I got my own room, still sticking to traditions we would yell down the hall at night to have our nightly conversations before bed. We would still sit in the bathroom and talk to one another when we had to “do the #2”LOL… We were connected so bad that when I went away to school I had to call home when I had to “do the #2” or I couldn’t do it. If I couldn’t talk to Rob, I had to talk to someone.

Our bond was too strong, still too strong to break. When he recovers, we can continue to make our bond stronger. We can continue to have those moments of playing shipwreck, or camping or school. We can have those moments where I wanted him to be smarter than me and would teach him what I learned in school before he even started school. We can have those moments where we would fight and try our hardest not to talk to each other and twenty minutes later we were talking again. When he recovers, we can sit, stand, walk and talk about our many memories as children and then we can make more.