Extra Credit: Need I say? Pictures, baby! Pictures from the past are good, but recent pictures of you and the siblings are just peachy, too.
Here I am with my brother Steve, in the earliest picture I have of us together. I look about two years old, so it should be 1959. That makes Steve nine years old in the photo. That's right: my only sibling is seven years older than I am.
Not surprisingly, the age difference didn't always make for a harmonious relationship. "Don't argue with your sister," Dad would say. "She's younger than you are. If she wants to say that the moon is made of green cheese, let her." I was highly offended by this. I might be young, but I knew the moon wasn't made of green cheese! Nor was I willing to concede that Steve's additional years of learning experience made him always right, and me always wrong. I was probably about seven years old at the time.
One of my first memories involving Steve predates our move to Manlius in 1961. Until I was four years old, we lived on York Road in Dewitt, NY, a couple of blocks behind Lincoln National Bank (and later, Ding How and the place I used to buy my tropical fish). Come to think of it, the road that ran past York Road was the road to Pebble Hill - I think. This was all a very long time ago.
My dad was only an assistant professor then, and my mom's paycheck wasn't huge. Consequently, the house on York Road was rather small. The only great things about it were the little stained glass window in front and the existence of a little creek at the end of the block. The bridge over the creek was strictly off limits to little kids like me, so of course I went there often with Susie C., and probably with Steve.
The thing that I really hated about the house was the fact that Steve's room was only accessible through mine. This meant that he could forbid me to go into his room, but I couldn't keep him out of mine. Beingsiblings, we squabbled about this from time to time, in between games of Parcheesi. One day, overcome by the manifest unfairness of my lot, I decided to do something about it. I locked Steve's door from the inside and pulled it shut from the outside, leaving Steve's room locked and empty. My memory is that it took both parents and several neighbors to get the room open again. I probably got punished, but it was worth it.
I don't have a lot of other stories to tell about Steve, at least, not in public. Steve wasn't all that fond of hanging out with his little sister when we were kids, especially when either of his friends, Fred and George, was at the house. Still, I remember lots of little things about Steve during the years in Manlius:
* My Whitman editions of Lassie: The Secret of the Summer, Tom Sawyer and Howard Pyle's Robin Hood were hand-me-downs from Steve. At one point in Dewitt I even got to play with a Zorro sword and hat that probably belonged to Steve. He never gave me his old Howdy Doody game, though, or his Visible Man.
* From time to time, Steve would invent nicknames for us to use, just between the two of us. For a while he called me Scout, after the character in To Kill a Mockingbird. The nickname for Steve that stuck was Steve-o, occasionally Steven Ericio. (His middle name is Eric.) Sometimes I was Karen Christino. I think he was still calling me that when I last saw him in 2002.
* When I was about eight years old, I happened to see the following written on a box:
M - 3 - 30
When I asked what M minus three minus thirty meant, Steve gave me an impromptu algebra lesson. "If M minus 3 minus thirty is equal to zero, when is M?" he asked me.
"33," I said. If only all algebra were that easy!
* Several years later, Steve taught me to conjugate "femina" in Latin. It was my only Latin lesson ever.
* When I couldn't find a date for the senior prom, Steve took me to a disco instead. I hated it, but it was interesting, and a wonderful gesture on Steve's part.
* Most of all: whenever I was upset, during all those years when we lived in the same house, Steve would come in my room and try to cheer me up. Maybe our parents were fighting, or I was in trouble over something, or some kids had been mean, or our housekeeper had broken something of mine or thrown it away. Mostly it was the first two cases. Steve would animate my stuffed animals: Trophy, Snoopy (not that Snoopy), Percy, Timmy, Toothy and the rest. He'd play tickle monster. He'd talk nonsense, or maybe talk sense. He'd be my big brother, looking out for me.
Steve moved out during college, then down to the Washington, DC area, over to Rochester and later to Cleveland. I saw him a few times in the early 1980s, when he lived in Cleveland and John and I lived in Columbus. The last time was in 1985. Just before John and I moved west in 1986, we tried to visit Steve but failed to connect up. I didn't see Steve again until our mom died at the end of 2002.
Above: Karen and Steve in May, 1979.
Left: Frank Funk, Karen, Steve Funk, the week my mom was buried. Yes, the thing behind us in the hotel lobby is a Christmas tree. My mom died on December 16th. Steve flew home to Cleveland on Christmas Eve.
Karen
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1 comment:
Great entry. I think this assignment from JS has been one of my favorites!
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