Nostalgia

"Surely She's a Mermaid," 2008 by Lea Keohane. All Rights Reserved.

My little brother, Dylan (yes, named after Bob), is 30 years old. Ever since the clock turned on his February birthday, we two Aquarians have both been in our 30's and let me tell you, that is just weird to think about. As I write this, Dylan and his daughter, my niece, are on an airplane on their way to come for a week-long visit. It is making me a bit nostalgic this morning.

When we were kids, at almost exactly 2 years apart, we were really close. A lot of my childhood memories are at my dad's house, which is weird because we only spent every other weekend there. Like a lot of divorced families, though, one parent has to deal with the day to day discipline, errands, homework, chores while the other parent gets to try to make up for missing out on it all by having a mini-vacation with few rules every other weekend.

Every other weekend. We would eat at Wendy's, rent a ton of videos and video games, and spend the weekend at our dad's playing in between watching all of those videos. We would spend whole days in the 3-foot-tall above-ground swimming pool until our sides were cramped and Dylan's shoulders were covered in painful burns and water blisters, until I had a deep tan and my stepmom would call me her little island girl, until we decided to cover the yard with a plastic drop-cloth and call it a slip-and-slide (not quite the same, let me tell you).

Then my dad and stepmom (now ex-step) bought a house in Colorado's foothills, and while the schedule stayed the same, our stomping ground grew. We would ride our bikes around long curvy roads to the store to buy candy, play with the goats and feed the chickens, run around on the giant hill that was nested up against the back of my dad's property. On that hill was a cave that we would dare each other to walk through. At the other end of the cave was an opening through which we could see the 2-lane-highway far below.

These are some of the best memories that I have of my childhood. There were times when I was in high school and was much moodier, that I didn't want him around as as much, and as we became adults and life got in the way we often didn't stay in very close touch. But we have always been close. I can't wait to spend this week with my brother.

A survey of sorts

"Electric Dream Water" 2008 by Lea Keohane. All Rights Reserved.

My friend Cara always has the most beautiful blog posts, complete with her amazing art and wonderful stories about her life. In her last post she tagged all of us, the readers of her blog, and since I am a bit of a survey-junkie (when the surveys are good ones), I thought it would be fun to play along. So here it is:

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
1998. Four years out of high school, and one year after I had moved to Portland. I was now an official Oregon resident, qualifying me for cheaper tuition at PSU, so I started back at school this time as a Fine Arts major rather than the Creative Writing one that I had been prior. I demoted myself from assistant manager at Macheezmo Mouse so that I would have the time for school and rented a really ragged apartment with my co-worker Adam. That apartment was crappy but it was my first introduction to SE Portland, one of my favorite places in the world.

2. Things that I would do if I were a billionaire:
Get my Master's degree for no particular reason. I would take Indigo every summer to live for 3 months in a different country (a new one every year). Buy a 2-story Victorian with a big yard in SE Portland (I KNOW there has to be one with a yard!!). Travel a LOT. Make sure that every child in Oregon has access to art-making. Make sure that Indigo never had to worry about money so she could live with less struggle than I have.

3. Places I have lived:
Loveland & Denver, Colorado
Nebraska (can't remember the city, only lived there for a year as a kid)
Iowa City, Iowa (spent my freshman year of college at the University of Iowa)
Portland, Oregon

4. Random musing #1:
If you let me, I could spend all of my days reading. When I was Indigo's age (8) I would read several books at a time, and by the time I was in 5th grade I was reading at an adult level, including Stephen King. I can't even imagine letting Indigo read Stephen King in 5th grade! That is also about the time I started writing short stories, and I was already drawn to the macabre. All of them had characters that died somehow...go figure.

5. Random musing #2:
Indigo is watching cartoons behind me, and it is breaking my concentration! I love a lot of animation, actually, but this is a wretched squeaky-voiced rendition of Strawberry Shortcake that I'm sure I would have loved at her age, but now it is seriously annoying. Boy, don't I sound crotchety?!? I think I need another cup of coffee.

6. Random musing #3:

As a child, my brother and I lived with my mom, but spend Wednesdays and every other weekend at my dad's house. Next door to my dad lived a girl about my age, just a bit older, named Barbara Naranjo. I always wonder what she is doing now. We used to make our own computers out of cardboard boxes, write and put on plays for the neighborhood kids in my backyard, wake up at the crack of dawn, eat Pacman cereal, and spend the entire day swimming, and whisper "I'm gonna get you and I'm gonna eat you" in my brother's ear while he slept.

Now you are it (if you want to be, of course)!