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| With Michael on the St. Peteresburg pier. |
My first clear memory of Michael was from our trip as a family to Hawaii when I was 7. Uncle David, Aunt Margie and their four boys were all living Oahu and so we decided to go visit while we had a free place to stay.
I loved Hawaii - it was a magical place full of memories like these:
~coconut tree-climbing men in skirts (I remember the announcer say that he didn't have any underwear on, and Mom tell me that it was a joke)
~ dancers in coconut shell tops
~ colorful fish which I viewed through my first experience with a snorkel
~ my first experience with truly gargantuan waves that knocked the breath out of me several times (I remember Grandma carrying me into them and me saying that they were too big and we'd be knocked over, and alas, we were - she stopped trying to make me go in after that)
~ beautiful sunsets of orange and red over the mangrove trees with the water lapping the shore
~ climbing the dormant volcano, Diamond Head, getting to the top and Mom realizing with dismay that there were no bathrooms or vending machines. Also on that climb, realizing we were supposed to bring flashlights and thus all 9 of us shared one and mostly climbed the steps in darkness.
~ losing my first two teeth, one of which was in a thift store and when mom asked if we could use the bathroom, the lady said there wasn't one, and my mom said "Well unless you want my daughter to bleed all over your floor, I suggest you find one." She found one.
~ being really hot at night because Uncle David's AC stopped working and I had to sleep on a top bunk
So anyway, along with all the cool stuff we did in Hawaii, I also got to know my two older cousins Michael and Brian, as well as my two younger cousins, Logan and Mark, a bit better. Brian, I decided, was a terror. He chased me around trying to "Indian twist" the skin on my arm or in other ways torture me. He was about 11, so I guess that was par for the course. I also didn't have a great sense of humor about it since I was the oldest and had never had an older brother teasing me. Michael, on the other hand, was quieter, about 12, and my rescuer from his malicious brother. He gave me piggy back rides and showed me cool stuff and talked to me like a grown up. When I wanted the lyrics to "Whole New World" on my Sing Along Disney VHS, Michael enlisted Brian's help and they kept rewinding the video to try to write down the words (this was before the world of internet in your average home). Basically, I thought he was the best cousin ever.
Fast forward about five years and their family now lives in Orlando, FL. We go down to visit and go to Disney. I am very excited to see Michael for the first time in such a long while, but when we get there, the sullen teenager using the computer is not the boy I remembered. I'm pretty sure he didn't say one word to me the whole trip, and me, being rather shy at that age, didn't say anything either. Brian on the other hand drove me around, taught me the words to Ice Ice Baby (which is the only rap song I know the lyrics to to this day) and was generally amusing and pleasant. The following year, we returned and this time Michael spoke a little, but I daresay, it wasn't a whole lot better.
Fast forward again about 3 years. It's Thanksgiving and I'm 15. My family is down in Tallahassee and Michael is attending FSU. On Thanksgiving day, I have been hanging out with a friend of mine on campus and Michael is assigned to pick me up from there before we head to Grandma's for dinner. When I got in the car, he gave me a funny look and said, "So, do you like this guy?" (I'd been hanging out with a guy I'd met the previous summer at a pool in Tallahassee). "No, why?" I said, rather taken aback that this cousin I barely knew would ask me such a strange first question. "Well, I just thought, you know, when girls dressed nice and wore makeup, then they must like someone." I gave him a deadpan look and said, "I always look like this." "Okay," he said. And off we drove with conversation flowing like it hadn't flowed since Hawaii.
In Michael, I'd found the older brother I never had and a kindred spirit. And ever since Nov. of 2002, we've been the best of friends. I have three best friends: Michael, Lieselotte and Tiffany. All are really wonderful and really dear to me in different ways, but there is something comforting with having one of my best friends be real family because then you know, no matter what, you'll never lose them.
That was a long reminiscence I suppose, but I figure, it's good to get these memories down while I still have them clearly in my head.
So anyway, tonight I figure we'll go out to dinner somewhere in downtown St. Pete and tomorrow, if it's not raining, we'll probably go to Ft. Desoto State Park to the beach. If it is raining, I guess we'll go to some local museums and try to go to the beach on Friday before heading back to Tallahassee.
