Today I received a call from my brother in Iraq. It was the first time we've been able to talk since little Johnny was born, other than on facebook. I can't explain how good it was to hear his voice again.
In about three months Johnny will be returning to the states and coming home to State College for a short time. Against what I personally would prefer, he has reenlisted for another five years and will be stationed far away in Washington state. This means very few visits and I am quite bummed about it, but Stephen and I plan on going out to see him there as soon as we can get up the money in a year or two. At least I know he will be on U.S. soil and not overseas again, which is quite a dramatic comfort.
It is hard to believe that about seven years have passed since Johnny first became a part of our family. In ways it feels like he was always there, and in other ways time has just taken off faster than ever before. When people ask me why I chose the name I did for my child, I can't help but think back to those first months when my brother began living with us. To be totally honest, I took the adjustment the least well out of the family. To this day I am ashamed to say that it was almost a year before I fully accepted the amazing boy who would one day mean more to me than I could ever express. It wasn't that I didn't like him, it was simply that I was going through a rough patch in my life and was entirely too focused on myself.
Over time Johnny made the slow transition from living with his mother a few days a week and with us the rest to being with us full time. The house that we lived in was small, but he didn't seem to mind using the living room as a bed room. Down the road, I shared the living room with him for the summer between high school and college to allow my sisters the chance to split up for the first time and each have a room of their own. I wanted to be there for the decorating process, the fun move, and so I took the couch and Johnny had his futon. That was the most memorable summer of my life.
Every night we were up until at least 2am, playing video games and cooking midnight dinners. At one point my parents finally forced us to stop grilling burgers outside past 10pm because the grill resided right outside of their bedroom window. Somehow Johnny mastered the art of cooking a hamburger in a skillet and still having it taste good... to this day I can't do that to save my life. More often than not it would reach dawn before we would finally settle down, and it took me years to break the habit of listening to that same CD he played every night to fall asleep.
When I started college, I quickly found that I enjoyed the new atmosphere, the new people, and the new life I was starting. As much as the other kids expressed homesickness, I found that the one person I truly missed most was Johnny. We had become close over the two years we had lived in the same house together, and when I would sit awake at night unable to sleep, I wished he was still there to talk to or even just watch a movie with. As with many college students, my internal clock was reversed, but that had happened three months prior to starting school thanks to my brother.
Now today, years later, I look back and can't imagine my life without him. Johnny for all intense purposes could have been born into our family, because he is and always will be my brother. Though we don't see each other nearly as often as before, it is to be expected that with age comes the natural parting of ways that all siblings have when it comes to their paths in life. This has not made us any less close, and when it came time to come up with a name for the baby boy I was to give birth to, my automatic reaction was to name him Johnny. Who else would be best as a namesake for the beginning of a new generation of my family?
I love you poo.
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