Of Birthdays & Brothers 

Happy birthday, America - the US turns 250 tomorrow! We may be looking a bit ragged, but we’re chugging along, like this scruffy trio in one of the most iconic images of the American Revolution, The Spirit of ’76. Fun fact: my stepfather claimed one of his ancestors was the model for the painting’s fife player. According to him, he was descended from a Revolutionary era military man who was a fifer during the war. I lean toward believing the story. At least, I choose to believe.

 

I’m looking back at another 4^th of July at the moment, to the Bicentennial in 1976. I know exactly where I was that day – cheering along with 60,000 other people at Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough, MA, as Elton John burst onto the stage dressed as the Statue of Liberty and launched into a concert for the ages.

 

  

When I started my memoir-ish coming-of-age novel My Bicentennial, I knew I wanted to end the book with that concert. A joyous, celebratory coda to high school senior Deidre Daly’s sometimes rocky path to growing up, growing wiser, and learning to love herself as she is. And to discovering she’s not alone on that journey. She has friends, she has The Boy, and, for all their dysfunctional foibles, she has her family, especially her older brother Jay.

 

Though most of the characters populating My Bicentennial are pure fiction, Deidre’s brother Jay is closely based on my big brother. Why? Because he was my hero and I wanted him to be Deidre’s hero too. We lost him 10 years ago this month. He wasn’t fond of having his picture posted on social media, so I won’t share a photo, but I will share his story…..

 

His name was Bob. Sometimes Bobby, never Robert, unless he was in trouble with his wife or my mother. Robert was too formal; he preferred Bob. It was easier, no fuss.

 

After all, there’d already been quite a bit of fuss in the beginning, because he was born “different.” To some folks in 1953, that difference was important. The medical textbooks called his condition severe Kyphoscoliosis. He wasn’t supposed to live 6 months, the doctors said. They told my mother to put him in a home and forget him. Anyone who ever met my mother knew that was never going to happen. She fought like hell to make sure he was treated like everyone else, and she made sure he knew he could do anything he wanted to.

 

And he did. Growing up, between surgeries at Shriners Hospital, his home away from home, he walked to school, rode a bike, played Little League, went camping with the Boy Scouts, got a job, and somehow learned to drive.

 

His last major spinal surgery, in 9^th grade, he was in the hospital for what seemed like years. My parents would drive 50 miles on Sundays to visit him. Sometimes we’d go too, but back then, they didn’t let kids into the wards, so we’d have to wait outside. Once, we were told to go around back, where the nurses rolled Bob’s bed to the window and we got a chance to see him and wave. Big excitement. He came home in the spring in an ambulance. I think half the housing project where we grew up turned out to watch – even more excitement.

 

Still recovering, Bob was flat on his back in a hospital bed in our living room for many weeks. But he still had to go to school. He had a sort of CB radio next to his bed, and someone at school would lug the other radio around the high school and set it up in each of Bob’s classes so he could listen in. Or sleep through it.

 

Speaking of sleeping…. My mother hired a neighborhood kid to help out when Bob was bedridden. A kid named Leo, who must’ve been in training for a career as a mattress tester, because as soon as he hit the couch, he’d nod off. Bob was not amused. He’d hurl anything he could get his hands on at Leo—nerf footballs, superballs, paperback books—to no avail. Rip van Leo just snored on.

 

His abuse of Leo aside, Bob was an all-around nice guy, with never a negative word about anyone (he left that to his snarky sister).

 

Bob taught me a lot. He taught me courage, how to be pragmatic, how to drive (though I wish he’d taught me how to parallel park). Most of all, Bob taught me to laugh. You laugh or you cry, he’d say, and despite everything, Bob chose to laugh. My siblings and I followed his lead and laughed too. Even in the darkest times, he’d laugh and we’d laugh and that helped us through it. Even at the end, when he was surrounded by the people he loved, we’d joke and he’d joke and we would laugh and that helped us, and hopefully helped him, get through it.

So, the boy who wasn’t supposed to live 6 months made it to 6 and 16 and 26 and beyond, touching a whole lot of lives along the way. Especially mine. I chose to say thank you in my own small way, by writing a character much like him in my most personal book. My big brother, who didn’t teach me how to parallel park, but showed me that courage, and a healthy dose of laughter, is the best defense, best offense, and the best way to get through it.

Writing under two pen names, Janet Raye Stevens/Evie Kelley finds it fortunate both personas get along. Janet pens stories of the mystery, history, and time travel kind, while Evie scribbles romantic sci-fi adventures for both YA and adult readers and the occasional coming-of-age story set in the 1970s era of mood rings, platform shoes, and the eternal debate of who’s cuter, Starsky or Hutch.