Just A Small Town Girl

Before I met my oldest brother, I had no idea that anything was missing from my life. I didn't feel any holes, any missing pieces.

The story of my mom's first child, adopted by his wonderful forever parents, wasn't part of the story I knew of my life, of my mom's life.

Since he found us, though, so much in my past, and my mom's past, makes more sense. Looking at things with the lens of added knowledge, there's so much more clarity.

For instance, Mom never expressed any overt hostility toward her hometown. She shared positive memories. There was no, "I hated every moment, and I couldn't wait to get out." Still, she never wanted to go back. She left at 19, and died at 83. She went back to her hometown exactly twice in those years, and one of those times was to deal with my grandmother's move out of her home and into a nursing facility.

When she got high school reunion invitations, I'd say, "Don't you want to go?"

"No," she'd say. "There's nobody that I need to see. I don't even know what we'd talk about."

Still, she's an introvert, very happy being alone, miserable in crowds, so that was fairly expected.

Mom hated crowds and noise, so it goes without saying that she disliked large cities; it would never have been her choice to live in one. She didn't even like to visit large cities. So, it was a tiny bit puzzling when she was also vocal about not wanting to live in small towns. "Small towns are terrible," she'd tell me. "Everyone knows your business, and everyone's in your business."

"I don't care," I'd say, especially as a child. (I wanted to live in a town that went beyond "small" and into "tiny.") My personality veers more toward TMI than it does toward close mouthedness, so having people know my business didn't seem like too big a drawback. Also, I'm very good at brushing off people who want to make my decisions for me. They annoy me, but I can ignore them.

That was viewing things through my lens. Through Mom's, things look different. I cannot begin to comprehend what it felt like to be an unmarried pregnant teen in the 1940s, in a small town in the Midwest.

My family probably already looked pretty scandalous to those with wagging tongues. My grandparents were divorced. My aunt was about to get a divorce. Mom was pregnant out of wedlock.

I can imagine the force of all of those well meaning advice givers and all of those judgement passers mostly from Mom and Aunt Jeanette's reactions - move 2000 miles away, and never come back. She never, ever spoke of it to me, my siblings, my cousins, but I don't have to hear the details; I see the results.

And, I can't count the number of times Mom told me that small towns were gossipy and judgemental. I chalked that up to her experiences during her divorce. In the picture perfect 1950s, she left a handsome husband and a pretty house to marry a never before married bachelor 20 years her senior - and he and her first husband worked together in a small town fire department. "Grandma," my daughter told her decades later, "you were scandalous!" She humphed, and smiled a small, amused smile. Now I know that, by then, she was a pro at navigating societal disapproval.

(In the turbulent, "free love" 1960s and 1970s, she was a faithful wife and mother. Whether she did it intentionally or not, I'm tickled that she swam upstream, against prevailing currents.)

How Mom described us now carries more meaning for me, as well. When someone asked how many children she had, my mother would say, "My husband and I have four at home," and, as the older kids were no longer at home, "My husband and I have four." It was invariably "we," not "I." If she said "I," it was usually with details about one or another of us - "I have one who's turning 30 this year." I always looked at it as her way of looping my dad in - two of us were children of her first husband, not my dad (her second husband). Still, he raised them, so I always liked that she always phrased it as "we have" four children, not "I have 2, and my husband has 2."

I'm still certain that was part of the intent. Mom presented us as a unit, because she saw us as a unit.

Now, though, I know that there was a second, unspoken part to that statement. "My husband and I have four" was accompanied in her head by, "And I have an older son." He was always in her head, always in her heart, just as the rest of us were.

So much of her life was colored by her first child, by this brother that I didn't meet until I was in my 50s. And now, I get to love him, too. And I love the way his life touched my mother's. I enjoy understanding her better. She was an outstanding mother, friend, aunt, sister just because of her own personality, but her experiences with her firstborn made her a better one. Having my brother had a huge impact on the kind of person she was, and the rest of us siblings (and our friends) reaped the benefit.

I understand so much more - and I am glad.

A New Brother

Like most people, I'd watched Ancestry.com's commercials for their DNA analysis. I'd seen the great Internet videos with happy people crying over their revelations. I wished the test were less expensive, but one day I decided, this is available, and I can afford it - I have no reason not to take the test.

I was hoping for mysterious and exciting news. I wanted to be one of those people who said, "I had no idea!" when they discovered that they had, say, Native American ancestry.

Instead, sophisticated analysis confirmed what I already knew; I'm so white that I practically glow. All of my ancestry came from white Europeans. There were possible "trace" DNA matches of roughly 1% from elsewhere, but they tell you that the plus/minus on the calculations can be up to 3%, so that wasn't terribly exciting.

The biggest surprise is that my German and Polish relatives - I'm the third generation of that line born in the U.S. - had Brits in it, as well, because my British percentage is 53% without the 5% Irish included; add in the Irish, and almost 6 out of 10 of my ancestors were at least in part from the British Isles. My Eastern European percentage is 23%, with another 9% coming from Western Europe. I would have assumed that was higher, since my great great grandparents arrived here from Germany and Poland.

Well, no big exciting reveal, I thought. It was still fun to have the information.

Ancestry.com asks you if you'd like to make your DNA profile and/or your family tree available for others to view and compare. Sure, I said.

And then came the exciting reveal.

Just after Christmas, I came home to a message from my sister on my answering machine: "Call me back!" There were two more messages in my e-mail; she knows I read e-mail more than I talk on the phone. There were capital letters and the message: "CALL ME.  Ellen phoned me and asked me who someone on her Ancestry DNA list is...and I looked on there (haven't been on for a couple months) and found a "close family" relative AND a message from that person's wife, and I think he is our half-brother."

Ellen is our niece, our half sister's daughter, so that narrowed any relative down to my mom's side of the family. Another brother? All my life, I've had one brother, my genetic half brother. He's the oldest, and I'm the baby.

I went onto my Ancestry.com account, and found the same message sent to my niece and sister: "My husband was born in Reno, Nevada in Feb.1949. It was a closed adoption, but the ancestry DNA shows that he as a close biological relationship with you. Do you know how?"

Holy cow! I have another brother!

We made some phone calls, did some digging, and the information we all had matched up with my mother being this man's mother.

Our mom graduated from high school in 1946. Here is her graduation photo:

She was just beautiful. Here's another of my favorites, taken when she and her cousin Joanne spent some time staying, by themselves, at my grandmother's cabin on Houghton Lake.

We knew that right about this time, she was dating a young man named Jim. All I remembered was that it was a bitter breakup, and she never wanted to discuss him. My oldest sister remembered a bit more - that Jim's family had been well off, and they hadn't approved of him dating a farm girl. I once came across a photo in Mom's album of her, Joanne, and two young men. "Who's this?" I asked, pointing to the man standing behind her, with his hands on her shoulders. Mom's response was, "Oh. I thought I burned all the photos of him."

"What? What? Who is this? What did he do?" She was very calm, but unwilling to say anything else. And Mom wasn't the "reassure me, or keep asking, and eventually I'll talk" type. If she didn't want to discuss something, it would not be discussed.

Mom likes most people, so it was enough for me to know that, if she didn't like him, there was a reason. Now I wonder if his, or his family's, reaction to the pregnancy was the reason they broke up.

We knew that Mom and her sister, my Aunt Jeannette, and Jeannette's husband Fred arrived in Reno in the fall of 1948. The story we'd all heard was that they were on their way to San Francisco, and stopped here temporarily, but temporary became permanent when they loved it here. The part they left out was that they stopped temporarily in order for my aunt to establish residency in order to file for divorce from her first husband, a serviceman she'd married while he was on leave back home in Michigan. It was apparently an ill-advised marriage, short lived; Aunt Jeannette never mentioned it. It took six weeks to be granted resident status; as a resident, she could file for divorce. Fred probably didn't drive out with them, but arrived later. After the divorce, Jeannette and Fred got married.

We knew that Mom decided to come West because she wanted a change, something new in her life. That made sense. He sister was coming out here - why not go with her? What we didn't know is that one of the reasons Mom left home and traveled literally across the country is because she was 19 and unmarried and pregnant.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I admire my mom. Imagining her at 19 brought an entirely new and fierce admiration of her. Think about it - it's the 1940s. She's a pregnant teenager, unmarried, not even seeing the baby's father any more. She's moving across the country, so she's arriving in her new home with no job. She's living with her sister. Every single day, she feels the baby wiggle and kick, knowing that she will not raise him/her. She takes good care of herself, so the baby will be healthy. She gets bigger and bigger, and more and more uncomfortable. When she's out in public, people start to ask her about the baby. She goes through all of it not because it's easy for her, but because it's best for the baby. And she gives him his best chance at a happy life, a life she can't provide.

I'm not sure if she told her parents. They were divorced; she could conceivably have told one and not the other. My grandfather died before I was born. I love my grandmother, sincerely, but she was an overbearing woman; if she had known, her reaction would have been, "Let me tell you what we're going to do, Beverly," and she would have mapped out every decision. And I can see my mother incurring her wrath by saying, "Not we - me. I will decide what's going to happen."

I'm not sure if she put on a ring and invented fictitious answers to deal with all of the strangers who would inevitably ask personal questions, or if she told them the truth and let the judgement or pity roll off of her back. Either would be in keeping with her character - feel no obligation to share things that are none of someone's business, and take no grief from others.

She found a job in a legal office; she'd work for attorneys for the rest of her life. That's probably how she met the attorney who arranged the adoption; she'd later retire from the firm that bore his name, working for one of his partners. This attorney was a personal friend of my brother's adoptive parents, and handled the private, closed adoption.

I hear that, at the time, women were routinely sedated during labor, and often did not remember the birth. It was also usual policy for the birth mother to be kept from seeing, holding, feeding, or naming the baby, if s/he was being placed for adoption. It was considered less traumatic for them if they never saw the baby. Sometimes, they weren't even told if the baby was healthy, or if it was a boy or a girl. My 19 year old mother woke up in the hospital without the baby. (In almost exactly a month, she turned 20 years old.)

My brother's wife and his daughter told me the story of when his parents met him. They received a phone call saying, "Your baby is here," and drove an hour to the hospital. The babies being adopted were kept together. They walked into the room, and a nurse tried to hand her a baby. "Here's your son," she said. The new mother walked straight to the bassinet with my brother in it and said, "No, this is my son." The staff tried again to give her the other baby. "No, Mrs. R, this is your son. That baby isn't doing well (he was experiencing "failure to thrive"), and when he's better, he's going home with another family." She was not deterred. "NO. This is my son!" The hospital finally decided, two babies and two families meant that she could take my brother home. "He's always known that he was not only adopted, but very much chosen."

I'm sure that my mother worried, and hoped his family was a happy one. In fact, his mother was literally chosen "Mother of the Year" for our state. He was happy, loved and healthy. He grew up with two (adopted) sisters. When we met, he teared up as he said, "If I could, I'd thank her for getting me to my parents. If I could have chosen, I would have chosen them."

He'd had his DNA tested to learn what his ethnic background was, and to try to find blood relatives. Ancestry.com couldn't tell us that he was my brother, just that he was a close relative.

He was surprised by finding Eastern Europeans in his background. As soon as he saw my mother's maiden name, he recognized it as Polish, "and I thought, 'There it is!'"

At almost 51 years old, I finally got the announcement of a new sibling. I had a new brother! Well, he wasn't new, but the news was.

And so I added to my family my oldest brother, Allan. With him, we also added his wife, Jenny, and their nine children. I almost doubled my nieces and nephews! Many of them have spouses and children. My family suddenly got much, much bigger!

I thought of conversations with my mom years ago, when my nephew and his girlfriend placed a child with adoptive parents. They didn't tell the extended family until all the details were in place. They were concerned, his mother said, that the extended family might be opposed to the adoption. None of  my nephew's relatives were.

To my mother, I said, "The most adult thing they've ever done is realize that they're not ready to be parents. Someone has been literally praying for this child to arrive. Please let him go to his family."

"Oh, absolutely. Absolutely," she said.

My grandnephew's parents offered to let any of us who wanted to come to the hospital be there to meet and hold him before he went home with them, to another continent. I went, but my mother did not. "It would be too difficult, seeing and holding him and knowing that I'd never see him again," she said. I understood then; he wouldn't be back until he was at least 18, and she wasn't likely to be alive then. I understand more now. She'd already done this once.

Before we met Allan and his family, I worried a bit. What if they didn't like me? What if they were critical of my mom? What if he didn't want more relatives? I decided that whatever he wanted, it was fine with me. Baby sister? Yes! Just medical information? OK. It was up to him what he needed from us.

Someone said, "Just because you share DNA doesn't necessarily mean he has to be your brother." I knew what they meant - family is more than blood. But at the very least, here were 10 people whose lives were made possible by my mother. That meant that they were precious to me.

Although he grew up near us, he now lived in a neighboring state. With his birthday approaching, Allan made plans to have his birthday party here, so that he could meet as many of our family as he could. He, his wife, several of his children, children-in-law and grandchildren came, as did his sister, who flew in from Hawaii.

They're wonderful people. We loved them before we even met them. "I can't believe you were all out there, all this time," Allan's sister said.

Finding out about them is both exciting and new, and very familiar.

And my brother was happy to have more siblings - just as we were happy to have him.

Minutes after meeting him, we were posing for photos.

Here's Allan and all of his attending siblings; one sister could not make it.

Here's all of us in attendance; this is not the whole family.

It was fantastic finding ourselves in each other's faces. My niece Bekkie gasped at a photo of my mother at 16, saying, "That's me! That's exactly what I looked like at that age!" I had the identical reaction looking at my grandnephew Trevor. My niece Katie looks like my sister Lynne, daughter Lana and son Alex.

A friend who lives far away saw the photos on my Facebook page and said, "Boy, are your mother's genes strong! Look at all of you!"

Here's the Facebook profile photo I uploaded after the party. 

Allan's had a mustache his entire adult life, so the theme of his party was "Mustache Bash."

Someone asked me, "Are you angry at your mom?"

"Angry? Why would I be angry?"

"Because she never told you."

Oh, no. I understand completely. Especially when I was a child, I would have made her crazy with questions. "Are you sure you can't find him or her? Do you think it was a brother or a sister? Can't you ask someone? They have organizations where you can register - why don't you register? Do you think he or she is looking for you? Do you think they look like me? Do you think they'd like me? Are you sure you can't find him or her?" If I found out that we knew the attorney who arranged the adoptions, I would have been insufferable, urging her to ask him for information, in violation of law and conscience. "I'm sure he knows something!" Oh, no, she did the right thing by not telling me when there was no way to find him.

And I have siblings and a father; she couldn't possibly juggle all of our feelings.

Now, our parents are gone, no one's feelings will be hurt, no legal agreements broken.

Mom died four years ago; Allan's mom died three years ago. Bekkie said, "I'll bet those moms got together and said, 'We have to get these kids together!'" I'll bet they did, too.

They were both great moms; they both loved their children.

And now we have new siblings. I mean, we always had them, but now we know.

Thanks, Mom.

Thanks, Allan.

And thanks, Mrs. R.

Ice Caves

Some of my favorite childhood summer memories are from time spent at my cousin's cabin.

All of my dad's surviving siblings were parents, and some were grandparents, by the time my dad got married, so I grew up playing with my cousins' kids. (This seemed very normal to me, and incomprehensible to my husband when we were dating and first married. "You must have that wrong." He could not imagine cousins an entire generation older than he was. When my husband's dad was 50, all of his own kids were married, and he had 4 grandkids. When my dad was 50, he got married, for the first and only time.) Dad had helped raise my cousin Lynne - in fact, she herself always phrased it as "raised me," not "helped" - before he had children of his own, and they were always very close. We, my sister and I, spent a lot of time with Lynne's three sons.

Lynne's second husband, George, worked for Pacific Gas and Electric, and they owned cabins that the employees could use for a nominal fee. Sometimes when Lynne's family would go to the cabin near Mt. Shasta, they'd take us with them. I don't recall feeling stacked like cord wood, but it must have been a tight fit. Sometimes we had Lynne, George, Lynne's sons Joe, John and Chris, George's mother, known to all as Ma Bell (since her last name was Bell), George's son George, my parents, my sister June and me, all in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom cabin. In our room there was a double bed (for my parents) and a bunk bed (for us kids), and the other bedroom was similarly outfitted, with the bathroom inbetween. Somebody had to have slept on the screened in patio, and someone on the living room couch.

I loved that cabin. I loved the tiny town with 81 residents, reachable only by dirt road, that it was in. I loved the mountain most of all. It just spoke to me. I've spent most of my life in a valley ringed by peaks of the Sierras, and I spent my newlywed and new parent years in a small town facing a large peak, but the one I refer to as "my mountain" is Shasta. I haven't been there for years, but she'll always be my mountain. I know exactly when she appears - or disappears - from view on any highway in her vicinity.

Small towns and summer meant freedom. I'm probably the last generation that had their parents feel safe turning them loose and saying, "Be back before dark." We rode my cousins' three wheelers, we fished, we went down to the general store and played pool or bought ice cream.

One year, the boys wanted to take us through "the ice caves," lave tubes that had ice in them year round. We thought this was a great idea. Our moms were onboard. My dad was not.

My dad was a pretty typical macho man with chauvinist tendencies. Had we been sons, he would have agreed in a second. But, we were girls, and therefore too delicate and incapable. He was terrified that we'd be hurt, by anything. We weren't even allowed to wash dishes - "Something might break and cut you." Dad put the "over" in "overprotective."

This was maddening to me. I felt perfectly capable of handling anything that the boys could. And the caves sounded really cool - the boys once found an antique gun and a lizard frozen in the ice.

So - kids, don't try this at home - our mothers conspired with us to let us go. We would smuggle our coats and gloves out of the house, and just neglect to tell Dad where we were going. We could put on our outerwear just before we went into the caves. Our moms knew where we'd be and when we'd be back.

The age spread was about 5 years from oldest to youngest. June and my cousin Joe were 3 years older than me, John, 2 years older, little George ("Georgie") was my age, and Chris was two years younger. Georgie was at his mom's for the week this particular summer. Joe was down the street helping Spence, one of the year round residents, reshingle his house. (Joe was hitting the age where he'd rather make money than spend time with "the little kids.") So, four of us set out to walk to the caves. I've always been bad at estimating distance, but it was probably about half a mile, out of town and past the campground.

The caves were great. Most gave us plenty of room to walk upright, although some were narrow enough that we had to go single file. It was cold; we needed the coats. Sometimes, we'd have to duck through an opening. We didn't find anything cool frozen in the ice, but we had fun.

Then we came across a cave that the boys hadn't previously been through. The only opening we could find was one that we'd have to crawl through, and I for one wasn't keen on that. We'd had to climb down a steep incline covered in loose rock to the cavern where we were sitting. There was a log that I was using as a bench, and several small holes in the rock that let us see through to what looked like a large cavern. It was bright enough inside that it had to have large openings somewhere, but we couldn't find any.

John was on his hands and knees, trying to see if we could all fit through the hole that only appeared to be about 18 inches tall. We were starting to get antsy, and complain about how long it was taking. "Let's just go on to the next one." "Hang on, I think I'm almost there." I went over to check an opening above John, one only a few inches across. I wanted to see where we were headed. It looked like the cavern below me was huge - I thought of a ballroom - with stones littering the floor. Still, I could see no way in. I sighed and sat back up.

Now June was getting ready to follow John. "It looks like we only have to crawl for a few feet."

"I'm not squeezing through there!"

"If we can fit, you can fit."

Suddenly, John started yelling. "Back! Back! Go back! Get out!" June sat back and John scrambled out of the hole. The rest of us were saying, "What? What?" when we all heard it - a sound, a roar, from inside the cave.

Panic ensued, total panic. All four of us tried to run up the slope at the same time, sliding and stumbling. Behind us, the sound seemed to repeat, to get louder. I was the slowest, and I was quickly behind the others. "Wait! Wait!"

"CATCH UP! Hurry!"

And then, I fell. I slid backwards, yelling for help, and everyone else hit the top of the incline and scrambled out. I crawled the last few feet as everyone yelled at me to hurry, and lurched to my feet as they took off running. "Wait! Wait!" I limped. "My foot! I hurt my foot!" We ran - OK, I hobbled - until we hit the road and stopped to breathe.

"What was that?" With the moment of panic over, we turned to John for answers. We'd all heard the noise, but we wouldn't have panicked without John panicking.

John explained that he was head and shoulders through into the cavern. "And then, the entire back wall moved."

"Something moved?"

"The whole wall moved! The whole thing!"

We didn't know what we'd run from. It could have been a landslide, a bear, Bigfoot, the little people Native American legend said lived on the mountain and caused hikers to disappear, a rift in the space/time continuum, an earthquake - it all seemed equally plausible and impossible.

We still had plenty of time before we had to be back, but we decided to cut the day short. "We can't go running home scared. We have to act like nothing happened." I mean, all we needed was for my dad, with his temper, to hear that we'd actually been in the presence of something dangerous. We all knew that situation would get ugly fast. We decided to just casually stroll home.

"You can't limp like that."

"It hurts!"

"Well, we can't go home with you dragging your foot that way!"

My big toe throbbed. "I think I broke my toe."

"You did not."

"It'll be fine."

They were right, though. I couldn't let my dad see that I'd been hurt. He'd never let me out of his sight again.

I'd pretty well perfected the casual walk by the time we hit the edge of town. It hurt, but so did limping. We stuck our hands in our pockets and strolled, ever so casually, into town.

We were coming up the street towards Spence's house, where we'd turn left and go up to the cabin. We could see Joe and Spence on the roof, ripping and hammering. Joe had peeled off his shirt in the midday summer heat. He was hot and sweaty, wearing only a pair of short cutoffs and his shoes. We were still a couple of blocks away when he looked up and saw us coming. He stopped work and stared. Then, he called Spence over - we were too far away to hear the words - and Spence stopped and stared. They wiped the sweat with bandanas and just watched.

"Are you still limping?"

"NO! Look at me! I'm fine!"

We continued our casual stroll up the street, trying to look innocent. As we came up to the house, Joe leaned over. In his best deadpan, casual voice, he said, "Cold out, isn't it?"

THE COATS! We were all still in heavy coats and gloves! The boys had hats on! In the middle of the day, in the middle of the summer! Within sight of the cabin! OHMYGOSH!

"Not really. We were just..."

"It was colder earlier..."

"It's hotter up there."

Joe was not interested. "Uh huh," he said, and went back to hammering.

We peeled off all of our outerwear in a flash. I don't remember where we stashed it - maybe in one of the cars. Then, trying again to project casual innocence, we strolled back into the cabin.

Both moms were surprised. "You're home early."

John did the talking. "Yeah. We just decided to come back early." He may have offered an excuse - hunger? fatigue? - but I don't recall. We waited until my dad and George went somewhere - maybe on a firewood run - and then told the story, with lots of dramatic gesturing.

Neither Lynne nor Mom was particularly concerned. We heard a noise, we ran - not a big deal. Both were very sensible, capable women, trying hard to raise sensible, capable children.

"I think I broke my big toe," I said. Instead of getting better, the pain had actually gotten worse.

"Does it feel like it's bleeding? Should we take a look now?"

"No, no, it's not bleeding. We can check it at bedtime." Again, hiding it was more important than risking Dad seeing it.

That night, while I got ready for bed, Mom and Lynne checked my foot. My toe had swelled dramatically into a tiny purple barrel shape.

"Can you bend it?"

I flexed just enough to move the toe. "Ow!"

"OK. If you can bend it, it's not broken. You've just burst all the blood vessels. It'll hurt like hell for a few days, but you'll be OK," Mom said.

Allow me to pause here to, in effect, sing a love song to my mother. This exchange is really indicative of her parenting. When I grew up and started devouring child development texts, I discovered that the way my mom behaved - apparently instinctively - was what experts recommend. If a child is hurt, physically or mentally, you shouldn't ignore or minimize it, but you also shouldn't allow the child to either panic or wallow (or do so yourself). You acknowledge the hurt, let the child experience and express the fear, pain or both, appropriately, but reassure them that it's temporary and that they can handle it. Then you send them on their way and let them handle it. That was the way my mother operated, all the time.

She checked it for me, acknowledged that it "hurt like hell," but also reassured me by using the word "just" before the scary description of "burst all the blood vessels." And, she reinforced that I would be OK. A brilliant woman, my mom. I try very hard to measure up to that standard.

"Do you want to wrap it?"

"No, no, that'll just make it bigger and more awkward. It should be fine." I cringed when I put my shoes on the next morning, since the swelling made it a tight fit, but it wasn't too bad.

We went back to check the cave - with our mothers' permission - to see if we could figure out what had happened. The whole thing actually got creepier at this point. There had obviously been a rock slide of some kind. Most of the access holes, including the one I'd been looking through and the one John was crawling through, were blocked from the inside. A huge rock had dropped onto the log - cliche' as it sounds - exactly where I'd been sitting the day before, smashing it. The incline into the cavern looked steeper - or maybe we were just freaked out.

We never agreed about what it was - animal, geology, volcanic vent - and we didn't discuss it too much, either. I think that John was simultaneously embarrassed about having caused a scene, and firm in his conviction that running had saved us. I think we all were. We told our moms what we found, and their best guess was some kind of volcanic burp, if you will, from the mountain - some kind of tremor that triggered a rock slide. I held out for the Bigfoot theory.

We never went back to the caves, though. On at least three more summers, we explored everywhere but the lava tubes.

A day or so later, someone tripped over my foot and I yelped. "What is it?" my dad asked.

"I fell the other day, and hurt my toe. She just tripped on it," I said.

"Oh," said Dad, and went back to what he was doing.

I like to think that I'm my mother's child - describe the situation truthfully, but without too much detail or drama. Just the facts, ma'am. You don't have to remember a lie, and it keeps those around you from panicking.

Maybe that's the moral of this story.

Well, that and the fact that you'll never look quite as innocent as you think that you do.

Darth Maul Goes to Disneyland

Last October, my family got to do something we've always wanted to do - we went to the Halloween party at Disneyland.

My daughters and I had to iron our costumes before we looked presentable, my husband had to inflate a bag to go inside his tall Mad Hatter hat, and my son in law had to buy a hat to replace the one he left at home hundreds of miles away. No one's costume needed more prep, though, than my son's.

The clothes were simple - black shoes, pants and long sleeved shirt, and the hooded black polyester cape he usually uses to be the Grim Reaper. He also had to shave his head.

Technically, his sister shaved his head. Before bed, the night before the party, we said goodbye to his hair.

He spent most of the next day in a hat, so as not to burn his lily white head.

At dinner, the real transformation started. The party started in the evening, so we got dinner at the Plaza Inn - one of our favorites - and broke out the paintbrushes, horns and spirit gum.

My middle daughter, Terry is a cake decorator and very artistic. Before we left home, she made horns out of air dry clay, numbered them, and fit them to Alex's scalp. She painted them with food coloring, and packed them.

Looking at a photo on her phone for reference, she started painting. After the main lines were drawn, she glued the horns on with spirit gum.

I helped fill in the large areas with color after Terry outlined them.

Two boys at an adjoining table inched closer and closer, finally abandoning their table.

The final result was amazing.

Here he is with his creator.

At the Star Wars photo op, the Storm Troopers reached out and wiggled the horns. On discovering that they were, indeed, stuck, they offered a fist bump.

As we walked past the living scarecrow, he said, "Oh, yeah. Darth Maul just ties you all together."

Oh, and he was chosen as the rebel spy on Star Tours.

I wonder what we'll do next Halloween to top that.

The Green Eyed Monster

I'm thinking, rather uncharacteristically, about jealousy.

I always think I have a handle on the human experience, that I understand other people's feelings, until I'm exposed to actual humans who seem so alien.

I figured that I "got" jealousy. Someone else has something you'd like to have, and you don't. Who hasn't experienced that? It seems so universal.

It's apparently not.

I was always annoyed by stories of siblings who were deeply resentful of each other. It seemed so cliche' and annoying. Now I'm reading another book with such siblings; one sister just has to have anything her sister has, and that translates into seducing every boyfriend of her sister's, and disparaging every accomplishment her sister achieves. I spent so many years dismissing such people as unimaginative fiction, but then I met so many of them that I finally understood where the cliché' came from. I'm still taken by surprise; I'm evidently a slow learner.

I grew up with siblings, and it never occurred to me to wonder who our parents loved best, or to covet what my siblings had. I thought my oldest sister was the most beautiful woman on the planet, but I was not resentful about it at all. I wished I looked like her, but I didn't. It was disappointing, but not anger inducing. I never wished that she was unattractive, or that a boyfriend would dump her, or any such thing. She was amazing – she still is – but I didn't think I was unattractive because she was pretty, or that because she was smart that I had to be stupid. We were all smart – I thought that it ran in the family.

I never avoided what my siblings did best, for fear that I'd never measure up, or insisted on redoing everything they did, hoping I'd outshine them. Sometimes I did the same things; I was a photographer like my big brother, and I won the middle school spelling bee, like my big sister. Sometimes I didn't; one of my sisters won track medals, and I was never going to be a runner.

Whenever one of the other kids compared themselves to me, whether it was positively or negatively, it annoyed me. That gorgeous older sister would forever make me, and our other sister, bare our teeth in the mirror and then lament, "My teeth are so yellow! Yours are white!" I hated it. My other sister would get weirdly competitive about things beyond anyone's control, like whether my chocolate chip cookie had more chocolate chips. "Let me see that," she'd demand, determined to count the chips, while I'd take a big bite and say, "No! Eat your cookie!"

"You had more than me! You just don't want me see it!" she'd say. Boring little pragmatist that I was, I couldn't understand how she could turn being given a treat into something to be upset about.

I did not value the qualities of being competitive or ambitious; those things just looked like misery to me.

Years ago, I asked my mother if I was just misremembering, and creating a little Zen persona that never existed. No, she said, all in all we were remarkably noncompetitive, and sibling rivalry or jealousy was the exception, not the rule, among the kids.

Once, after they broke up, one sister's former boyfriend asked if he could take me out sometime - "Or would that be too weird?" Too, weird, I agreed. I didn't gloat; I wondered why he'd asked.

It wasn't just my siblings. I didn't feel I was in competition with my friends, either. Sometimes I had the best grade or art project whatever else, and sometimes I didn't. That's how I expected life to work.

When another person got a part I'd wanted, I occasionally got angry at the director, but not at the person they cast. One director I worked with years ago was so deeply predictable in his casting that it got to the point that I could pick out from the group, before any of us had actually auditioned, who would be cast. He cast people he thought were beautiful. I did not qualify. That's the director's problem, not the beautiful people's problem.

Being a photographer was a big part of my sense of self from the time I was eight years old, and being a yearbook and newspaper photographer was a huge part of my high school identity. Still, my friends frequently asked to borrow the camera I brought to school every day. I let a couple of them borrow it on a regular basis. When one of their photos would be chosen for the yearbook, especially if someone complimented me on it, I'd say, "Scott took that one," or "That one's Ariane's." I was proud of having talented friends (and a nice camera), and glad we had a good variety of photos for the book. The other photographer and I couldn't be everywhere. The book was supposed to represent the whole school.

When I was a senior, Ariane took the camera to her science class, and got a great photo of the class python going straight up the side of the glass enclosure, while a student sat just inches away watching him. The yearbook advisor called me over when she saw it on the proof sheet (it's a film reference – either you're old enough to remember, or I can't explain it to you.) She assumed it was mine, and wanted details about when it was taken. "That's Ariane's," I told her. "Ask her. She'll know."

"I really want to enter this at Press Day. I think it would have a good chance of winning," the yearbook teacher said. Press Day was a competition for high school newspapers, held once a year at the local university. I'd entered things at Press Day, writing and photos, but never won. Press Day awards were the high school equivalent of a state title, and they were coveted.

In order to be entered at Press Day, the photo had to, of course, appear in the paper, and to appear in the paper, it had to be tied to an article. "What's going on in the science department?" the teacher quizzed us. "There has to be something we can write about!" Finally someone scrounged up something newsworthy, and the photo went into the paper, with Ariane's byline.

She was not nearly as excited about the photo being entered as the teacher and I were. "I'm not even a photographer!" she said.

"You took that photo, and it's good," I told her.

"But I'm not even on the newspaper staff!"

"Shut up. You don't have to be on the staff. You go here. That's all that matters."

The photo took first place in the photo category at Press Day. Our school hadn't won a first place for years, and the staff was giddy.

Later, someone asked me if I was angry or upset about it. "Why?" I wanted to know.

"Well, because you're a photographer, and you didn't win. She isn't even a photographer, and she did."

I can't even remember who asked me, but it was unwise. I was Ariane's biggest cheerleader, and defended her fiercely when I thought I needed to. Besides, aside from basking in her reflected glory, which I often did, there were so many ways I figured that this win was a great thing for me. I was Photo Editor of the paper, and we had the first place photo. Even better, my best friend took it, with my camera. Maybe it's self centeredness, but I thought the win had plenty to do with me. Even if it didn't, Ariane deserved it. I think I was at least as proud as her parents.

Would it have been great if it was my photo? Sure. But Ariane taking a great photo, or hundreds of great photos, didn't diminish my talent at all. It's not as if there's a finite amount, and in order to take a great picture she had to leach talent away from me.

My husband hates to go places alone, so we've frequently arranged for him to take a female friend with him when I can't go somewhere. He's taken some very beautiful women some great places. One of our friends was his "date" so frequently that she referred to herself as his "girlfriend." She still does, occasionally. I am not bothered. Neither is her husband.

So, I'm puzzled, really baffled, when I run across somebody who is deeply jealous. It makes no logical sense to me.

I've actually set the book with the whiny, jealous sibling down and picked up another novel. It was just too aggravating. I found myself wanting to smack this character once too often, so now I'm deep in a new Patricia Cornwell. I mean, sure, there's a psychotic killer, but you're supposed to dislike the villain.

Siblings

A friend of ours has a household full of daughters. When she and her husband married, they each had a daughter from their first marriages. They then had three more together, and are currently raising a niece as well. I made mention not too long ago of the fact that my brother and sister were from my mother's first marriage. "I've been meaning to ask you about that," she said. She told me that she and her husband worried that their girls would have issues with each other. Their niece looks very different from the others, one girl lives part time with her mother, and one girl's father recently died. Add normal sibling squabbles, and you have potential for resentment. They worried that the girls would pick on each other and form alliances against one another based on who their parents were. "What was it like for you growing up?" she wanted to know.

I cannot remember a time when I didn't know that my brother and sister had a different father. They look very much like their Italian dad, for one thing, whereas my father's two daughters look almost Nordic. My brother retained his original last name. It was just another fact of my life, like our address. I thought nothing of it.

I also knew, from the time I was a small child, that their father did not come to visit them and they did not go to visit him. They never even got birthday cards or phone calls. I also knew that my dad preferred it that way – he and Frankie, Lynne and Gary's dad, did not get along. Now I wonder how different the family dynamic would have been if Frankie had been a familiar presence. At the time, I never went any deeper than the explanation that Frankie was an alcoholic, and one of the reasons my mother divorced him was that he ignored his children, or broke promises made to them. She'd told many times the story of the day she first decided she would leave him. He'd promised the kids that they would go to the park after he got off work. She assumed that this would be another empty promise, but the kids were excited to go out with their dad. After work, he went to the bar instead of coming home, and she knew that. She assumed that they didn't. As time went by, they clamored to go to the park, and she put them off by telling them that Dad wasn't home yet. She figured they'd assume he was still at work. When the response was, "Well, why don't we just go pick him up? He'll be at the bar," she realized that the kids were fully aware of where their dad was, and that the bar was more important to him than they were.

I knew my dad thought of Frankie's two kids differently than he did his own two. That knowledge wasn't integral to my being, though. It came gradually over the years. His relationship with Gary was always problematic. I was sure then, and still am, that part of it was because Gary was a boy. More particularly, he was Frankie's son. It bothered Dad that the only other male in the household was not his son. I was, and am, sure that he'd wanted me to be a boy. I was pretty much his last chance, born when he was retiring and the finances were already stretched unbearably – born, I think, to give him one last chance at a boy, and to even the score at 2/2. I always knew he loved me, but I was also sure he'd had his fingers crossed for a boy.

I barely remember when Gary had his own room. When I was young, one room was Lynne's, one was June's and mine. Gary slept on the living room couch and stowed all his belongings behind it. Still, I thought of that as a space issue. The house only had three bedrooms. I remember sleeping in a crib in my parents' room, and I remember the first time I slept anywhere else. When I was three, they moved me in with my sisters. The girls' bedroom had a double bed that Lynne and June shared. They put me in the middle, and I was miserable. I was cramped and hot, and the others kept pulling the covers up over my face. I slept badly and hated it. It was shortly after that that Gary moved onto the couch and Lynne got his room. I assumed it was a move to keep all three of us girls from having to share. It wasn't, but I didn't know that until much later. He'd actually moved out of the house, and then back in. I was sure that keeping me from having to spend my life sleeping in the middle was an obvious goal.

Still, it didn't really sink in how differently Dad saw us until I was fifteen or sixteen. We had a family friend over, and Dad said something to him about "my stepson." I was baffled. I kept turning it over and over in my mind. Dad had never been married before. There were only the four of us kids. He always referred to Lynne as "my daughter," just as he did June and me. I could not for the life of me figure out who he was talking about. It took me probably twenty minutes or more of puzzling before the lightbulb went on in my head. He meant my brother! That was the only time I ever heard him use that term, although I can't recall him ever saying, "my son." Usually he referred to Gary by name.

I always adored Gary and Lynne. I thought that Lynne was the most wonderful person in the world, and I wanted to be just like her. I was three years old at my brother's high school graduation, and I remember being upset that a bigger fuss wasn't made over him during the ceremony. They just read his name, and he walked across the stage, just like everybody else. I thought he should at least get to speak or they should talk about him or something! After all, HE was the important one, and everybody else was just kind of there, too.

I loved it when either one of them got to babysit. Gary played games, and Lynne once walked with us all the way to 7-11 to get lunch – what an adventure! Plus it was new, exotic food – Spaghettios with sliced hot dogs in it! What a gourmet meal! What an adventure!

When I was in first grade, some of the kids in my class were talking about nationalities. One boy volunteered that he was Italian. "My brother and sister are Italian," I told him. "Well, that means that you're Italian, too," he said. Nope, I told him. I was German, Polish, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. "If your brother and sister are Italian, then you are too!" he insisted. No, I told him, I'm not. I was having a bit of fun with this game, but he was becoming more and more agitated, so I decided to reveal my trump card, proving I was right. "They have a different father than I do. Their father is Italian," I told him.

He calmed down once the mystery was explained. "Oh, they're not your real brother and sister, then," he said. Now, I was a mousy, timid child, scared of my own shadow, but I was infuriated. No one had ever said such an insulting thing to me in my life. "YES, they ARE!" I ripped into this poor kid. We had the SAME mother, we lived in the SAME family, and nobody had any right to tell me that my brother and sister WEREN'T my brother and sister! The poor boy stared at me with his eyes getting wider and wider as I ranted, and finally stammered an apology. I don't think anybody in my class had ever seen me stand up to anyone before. I stopped yelling, but inwardly I seethed. I don't think I ever really forgave him.

When I went home full of indignation and told my mom, she told me that some people thought that way. She told me that the technical term for what Lynne and Gary were to me was "half brother" and "half sister," but we'd just never called them that. If I ever got into a nationality argument again, she said, I could explain it that way. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard. "Half" brother? "Half" sister? It was absurd. How can you have half a brother or sister?

Gary and Lynne, on the other hand, had every reason to resent June and I. For one thing, they always had chores, and we, the younger two, didn't. People have grown to hate each other over less. But as far as I ever saw, it never affected the way they thought about us. They didn't care who our dad was, or who took out the trash or fed the pets - we were their baby sisters. I asked them, and my mother as well, after we were all grown, if they actually resented us and just did a good job of hiding it. They both had looked rather puzzled that I'd asked, and assured me that no, they never thought of it that way. Mom too was sure that they never thought any such thing. I suppose that could be unusual, but probably not. Children don't usually have the same issues that adults do.

Gary was a scenic and wildlife photographer. I was fascinated by that. His regular job was working in a garage, and I bragged to everyone that he was a mechanic. I thought that was very impressive. He was actually the parts counter guy, a job he'd have off and on all his life, but I was blown away by the fact that he knew what all the parts of an engine were, and how to fix things. Dad didn't, and he was older. That to me said that Gary was very smart (which, actually, he is).

I was so enthralled by his photos, and the trips he took to take them. When a photo would appear in a magazine, he'd give Mom a copy, and I was delighted. Once, his photo was even on the COVER of a magazine. It was great! I was star struck. For Christmas the year I was eight, he bought me my own camera. I had never owned anything so wonderful and grown-up in my whole life! I loved it. It went everywhere with me. I soon learned that I had an "eye" for photography. Everyone else loved my photos, but the praise I craved the most was Gary's. He was a REAL photographer.

After Lynne moved out, I loved it when I could go to her apartment, or shopping, or out to lunch with her. I loved her car, a red VW bug. I wanted one just like it when I grew up. I wanted to be just like her, but she was so pretty. I knew I'd never be as pretty as she was.

When I was ten, I got to be a bridesmaid in Lynne's wedding. It was so glamorous! We shopped for beautiful, floor length dresses. Lynne and Mom finally made them, which was even better. I loved my yellow dress with its lace trim. I loved being important on such a special occasion. I even walked first down the aisle, a prospect that was terrifying but became doable after Lynne assured me that she knew I could do it. We pressed my bouquet of yellow and white carnations, and stored them in the box with my dress, under the bed in Mom's room.

When I was eleven, Lynne made me an aunt. I was so excited! Plus, none of my classmates were aunts. I felt special. I remember clearly going into my fifth grade teacher and telling her about my niece's birth, along with her full name and the fact that she was my sister's daughter. I remember even more clearly the phone call announcing her arrival the night before, after I'd already been put to bed. Mom came in to tell June and I that the eagerly anticipated baby was here.

Actually, my relationship with June has always been the problematic one. For one thing, we were close enough in age to butt heads. Also, she was Dad's first child, born when most of his siblings were grandparents. He'd almost given up on fathering a child. She was adored, and accepted it as her due. Then I came along. While I was not lavished with abject adoration, I took enough of the spotlight to make her forever resentful. Plus, she had informed my parents that she wanted "a boy baby," and was angry when they brought a girl home from the hospital. "Take her back and bring me a boy!" she said.

The closest we got to any - what, discrimination? - based on biology was when any of us girls, Lynne included, would do something Gary thought was stupid. Then he'd grin and say, "Well, that certainly doesn't come from Mom's side of the family." We were never offended by this. I still think it's amusing.

I told my friend, "Truthfully, it never mattered to any of us." None of the four of us had worried about parentage or bloodlines. We were simply siblings.

Growing Up Is Hard To Do

My youngest daughter was asked to speak in church last weekend. I think she did a great job. She took a great deal of her talk from published sources, so she did a lot of reading quotes instead of presenting her own take on the subject, but why reinvent the wheel? If you find a source who says it eloquently, quote them. She was poised, spoke clearly and, like the actress that she is, knew what and how to emphasize.

Afterwards, someone who frequently sees her in her class at church said to me, "She does a much better job reading things she's familiar with instead of reading straight from the scriptures. She ought to read her scriptures out loud more often." Well, everyone should probably read their scriptures more, but that's another subject. When she's asked to read a scripture passage aloud in class, she stumbles and fumbles and stutters and asks for help. I smiled and nodded; every parent spends time doing that when listening to others describe their kid(s). You see, when asked to read a scripture out loud at home, or even in a class I'm in, she does it beautifully, handling even the foot long Hebrew names better than many adults. When her parents aren't around, though, you'd swear she was a struggling reader who'd never even seen a Bible.

It took me back to watching her oldest sister give a talk in the children's meeting at church. She'd chosen to read a story out of a church magazine. She couldn't have been any older than seven, because we moved to a different town the summer after she completed first grade. Again, practicing this story at home, she sounded great. Once she got to church, she sounded borderline illiterate.

Most of the time when a child read something aloud during these meetings, one of the leaders (or a parent) would stand next to them and whisper the words in their ears, and they'd repeat it into the microphone. This was especially true with the younger children, who weren't confident readers yet. I knew my child, and knew she didn't need me.

I watched her hesitate and mumble for a few sentences, then stood up and whispered in her ear, "You can do it." It was like flipping a switch. Suddenly her reading was smooth, clear, precise. She had no trouble with any of the pronunciations, understood the punctuation, and sounded like a child years older than she was. Afterward, all the leaders and teachers swooned over her, telling her what a great job she did. Instead of basking in the praise, she stared at the floor and fidgeted.

One of the leaders said to me, "Sometimes all it takes to shine is to hear that your parents have confidence in you." Again, I smiled and nodded. This was most certainly not how this daughter viewed things.

She was furious with me. I had caused her to stand out, to look DIFFERENT than the other kids, in public, and that was unforgivable. Especially at that age, in kindergarten and first grade, we had lots of discussions that began with her saying, "Everybody else..." She HATED the fact that she stood out. She had insisted that instead of the beautiful coloring she did at home, "In school, you're SUPPOSED to scribble. Everybody does." The same went for any other skill; it fell on deaf ears to tell her that the other kids were doing the best they could, and she should do the best SHE could. "It should all be THE SAME," she would insist.

She was also angry because I had deprived her of the attention of the leaders, the one on one of having somebody focus on just her instead of on a large group of kids. She didn't see that with all the praise she was getting, she was getting more attention, positive attention, and that it came from every adult in the room, not just one. She wanted the leader standing next to her, whispering in her ear. Plus, I had made her stand out as different, and that was just wrong.

My middle daughter has always had a severe case of Middle Child Syndrome, never feeling quite as though she got as much attention, recognition, praise or whatever else as she wanted. She frequently voiced the opinion that, "Things are only special when the oldest and the youngest do them." Even though we insisted that accomplishments were special whenever anyone achieved them, she'd roll her eyes and tell us we were wrong.

My son is happiest sitting quietly in the back of a classroom, being unnoticed. He does not like to be singled out. He blows most praise, from any source, off; he's such a total perfectionist that he doesn't think that much is praiseworthy. (He constantly tells me that people's standards are too low. Every now and then, he'll look at what the average person can do as compared to what he's done and announce, "People are idiots!" I try to convince him otherwise, but am frequently thwarted by 1. people who are idiots and 2. his conviction that my standards are too low.) He has made an armchair diagnosis of his little sister - "narcissistic personality disorder."

Ah, my youngest; she deeply craves attention. Mostly, she wants people to think that she's adorable. Somewhere in both her conscious and unconscious mind, she remembers when people found her mere existence adorable. As the youngest, she noticed that when we were out in public, when people swooned over any of the children it was over her, the baby. Everything she said, did and was had adoration heaped on it by the ton. Every baby experiences this.

When my nephew Jeremy was nine, he asked one day, "Aunt Sherrie? How come everybody just loves babies, but once you get older nobody cares?" At that point, he was watching the phenomenon from the opposite perspective; he was the oldest child in our household of five children. It was my son, the baby, who was receiving the swooning and adoration at that point. We'd be out in public with all five kids, little blond stair steps, and all people would see was, "Oh, look at that baby! He's so cute!" Sure, he was adorable, but so were the big kids.

I explained my belief: "I think it's because babies are all potential, so people can imagine them as anything they want. They've never disagreed with someone, or done anything that would offend them. People look at a baby and imagine the very best of everything. Plus, it's just hardwired into people to love babies - otherwise, they'd never be willing to deal with all the work and exhaustion and sacrifice of caring for a completely helpless, tiny person. It's a survival of the human race thing."

I don't know if it helped Jeremy, but I think it was a good explanation.

My youngest simply knows that it used to be an absolute given that her place in the universe was 1. at its center and 2. surrounded by adoring subjects. When she hit about seven years old, she noticed that it was no longer a given that she was darling. People did not automatically swoon over her mere presence or existence. She became convinced that it was because she wasn't cute enough any more. I remember watching her get her Girl Scout cookie order form one year and sighing, "I won't sell as many cookies this year. I used to be cuter." Half of her life has been a pre-adolescent version of the midlife crisis.

She recently had to move up from the children's organization at church to the youth organization. She was not thrilled. She insisted, frequently and loudly, that getting older meant, "I'll be BORING!" ("Boring," by the way, is worse than death.) She tries in vain to recapture what it felt like to be three and precocious. Most kids her age exult in leaving behind the little kids; she is sure that if she's surrounded by younger children, she'll be cute by association. She's warming up to the whole youth group thing, which is good. I suspect a lot of that has to do with great leaders and other youth, but a lot has to do with being the youngest one in the group. That is her comfort zone.

Her older siblings watch her exhibit some immature behavior and cringe. "Why does she DO that?" they ask. I remind them all that they did immature things when they were younger. Frequently they say things like, "Yes, but I was stupid," or "I have no idea what I was thinking." Well, OK, I tell them, it's the same for her. Eventually she'll "get" it.

"Can you get her to stop that?" they ask. They do not like the answer - "No, I can't." A couple of days ago I asked her older sister, "Did you listen to me all the time, and do what I told you to without question?" She snorted at the ridiculousness of this.

"NO!!"

"Well, neither does she."

I have to admit, I have more patience than I otherwise would because I do have older kids. They're adults now, delightful adults, so I know that no phase lasts forever. This too shall pass. If I didn't know that, sometimes being a parent and saying things for the 1,849th time, this week alone, would drive me literally insane.

Eventually, my "baby" will discover that we have a culture in which teens are considered the height of attractiveness. She will, I hope, be delighted to be a teen. She will discover that growing up means more freedom, more choices, not being boring.

Oh please, oh please.

I'll settle for anything that is progress toward age appropriateness, and pride in getting there, and worry about how she'll eventually deal with the loss of youth, the youth she now does not want, when we get there.