Why My Brother Should Be Dead

Most of you know that for the past 10 days, I've been in the "residency" portion of my MFA degree. While in workshop one day, one of the exercises we had to do was to free-write a story that began with the line: "This is a true story." So I wanted to share this one with you guys (and it is, in fact, a true story!)

This is a true story. We were living in this old brick house with creaking wooden floors in Hialeah. My mom was showing the house to a couple that was interested in buying it. When she came to my brothers’ room, she noticed that the window was open and two little hands, white-knuckled, were gripping the bottom of the window frame. She, of course, screamed and rushed to the window to find my blonde-haired brother beaming up at her, his body dangling on the outside of the red brick house. 

This should not have surprised her. Just before our house went up for sale, we had a permanent fixture at the bottom of our staircase: a queen-sized mattress. The sole purpose of this mattress was to catch my brother whenever he went flying off of the banister of our expansive wooden staircase. The antique chandelier that overlooked the first floor had several crystals and light bulbs missing from the times that Daniel jumped off of the staircase with an umbrella, perhaps in an attempt to fly like Mary Poppins or maybe he simply wanted to see if he could swing off of the chandelier. 

Prior to the mattress, my parents had tried putting up one of those child safety gates at the bottom of the staircase to prevent access. When that didn’t work, they put a net on the outside of the staircase to try to keep him from going through the slots in the banister. A week after the safety gate and the net were in place, my mother found Daniel laying unconscious on the first floor of our house, his blue gray eyes staring up at her. She, of course, screamed and rushed to his side, but after approximately 30 seconds, he jumped up with a grin on his face and ran back to the staircase. After this incident, she scrapped the safety gate and the net and put a mattress down as a last effort to try to keep him alive. This sort of thing became the norm in our house. 

When we moved to our new house in Broward, my parents bought us a large trampoline with a bright orange safety net around it. My dad would pull the trampoline over to the large oak tree in our yard and Daniel would climb to the highest limb, balancing precariously as the branch swayed beneath him. He would then jump from the tree onto the waiting trampoline, which bounced him almost as high as the safety net that surrounded the trampoline. Safety nets were not particularly effective in our household. 

Daniel on the slopes of Steamboat Springs, CO

 

One time, on vacation in my grandfather’s condo in the Keys, a concerned neighbor pounded on our door to tell us that Daniel was skateboarding off of the top of the two-story parking garage. My mom, of course, ran out of the condo — not to stop my brother, but to record him.

The first question that my professor asked when I finished reading the piece was, "Is your brother still alive??" I'm very happy to say that Daniel is, in fact, still alive. And I hope he stays that way for a very long time.

3 Things I Learned From my Mother

There’s about a million and a half things I’ve learned from my oh-so-amazing mother. For the sake of time (and everyone’s sanity), I was able to, miraculously, narrow it down to three things I’m really grateful she taught me:

1. Number My Priorities

It was my junior year of high school and I was overwhelmed to the point of tears — my head cradled in my arms on the kitchen table, paralyzed by the amount of work that I had to do for school. My mom sat next to me, with her pen and paper and said, “What do you need to get done?” We sat there, her writing down everything I needed to accomplish, and then together we numbered each item in order of its priority:

    1. Ride my horse (this was usually a priority in the Stearns Family!)
    2. AP Euro paper rough draft
    3. Stats homework
    4. And so on…

This may seem like a really simple thing, but I have continued to use this method for overcoming any feeling of paralysis that might come on due to a long to-do list. I number the things most important to me, and I get those things done in order. If I don’t have time in a day to accomplish all of them, I move on to the next day. And renumber.

2. The Power of Prayer

My brothers will confirm that one of the most consistent sights of our childhood was my mother having her morning Bible study and prayer time. Every day, she would sit at the kitchen table, sipping her coffee, with her rather fat Thompson Chain Reference Bible open in front of her. Our late cat, Perry, found that the opened Bible was her favorite place to sit, and her and my mom would play this game: mom would push her off, Perry would find a way back on.

I remember my mom teaching me how to pray when I was about 7 years old. I came up to her one morning, and she offered me a spot on her lap. She showed me her very-detailed prayer list and revealed to me her “prayer secret”: A.C.T.S.

A: Adoration
C: Confession
T: Thanksgiving
S: Supplication

Every morning, my mom would spend time pouring out her adoration to God, confessing her shortcomings before him, thanking him for everything he’d given her and then appealing to God for her friends and family. Now, if that doesn’t bring you closer to God, I don’t know what will.

Whenever I have something “big” going on in my life, I always tell my mom. For starters, I do this because I love my mom and I want her to know what’s going on in my life. But I also know that when my mom says she’ll pray for me, she's really going to pray for me. And something tells me that she’s got God’s ear.

3. Strong is the New Skinny

My brother, Joey, was in second grade when his teacher remarked on how toned my mom’s arms are, and that she wished her arms looked like that! For some reason, this memory has always stuck with me. My mom is a slender woman, but she is strong. You don’t get to be as good of an equestrian as she is just by being skinny.

When I think of what I want to look like, I don’t think: “skinny”, I think: “strong”. A big reason for this is because of my mother: she never emphasized wearing makeup or having the nicest clothes and she was the first to have a cinnamon roll on horse show weekends but, above all of those things, my mom is a strong, capable woman who is beautiful inside and out. I hope that when people look at me, they see her strength living inside of me.
 

My beautiful (and strong!) mother on her trusted stead, Patrick

What’s something your mom taught you that you’re thankful for? Share in the comments (or, better yet, share with your mother!)