Michael and Me

Thanks Karen and Melody for commenting and giving me direction ;) This post is a result of this blog. Go there and check it out! Be awesome like Melody and Karen and let me know what you’d like to hear more about. Be awesome so I can be lazy and not actually have to think up an idea for my next post. Thanks a billion, Internet. You’re swell.

So back to Michael and Me…

I am a middle child. Weird, right? I know.

I can see you all shaking your heads like, no WAY you’re a middle child. Middle children aren’t supposed to be bossy or stubborn or care what people think about them. Middle children are supposed to be rebellious and angsty and demand attention.

Ok, so I occasionally demand attention.

Shut up.

But I am a middle child. Technically. I pretty much grew up as the oldest, though, so there’s where the bossy, stubborn, perfectionist vibe comes from. Sometimes I wish I had gotten to be more of a middle child though. Having a fall-back excuse for being a brat would have been AWESOME. Also, it would have meant that my brother would have been around more, which is where I am going with this.

Michael. I have a Michael.

He turned 34 in December. His name is Michael Robert Wittmann. Aaaaand…that’s about all I know.

He’s my dad’s son from him his first marriage. I don’t know much about his first wife, just that they dated in high school, got married and joined the army right after graduation.

They divorced when Michael was 3 or 4.

*Insert long romantical story about how my parents met and fell in love here*

Their story is actually pretty great and totally cute, but it would take me 6 years to actually get it right and typed out and really? I don’t have that kind of time.

When my mom and dad got married, my mom knew he came with a child. Michael would stay with them sometimes on weekends and stuff. There are cute pictures in old photo albums of my parents and Michael playing at a park, sliding down the slide, bouncing on the teeter-totter and smiling and being happy. My mom and dad look so young, and Michael looks JUST LIKE my dad.

So when my mom and dad had Kevin and me, Michael became a big brother. He was nine when I was born. There are pictures of him holding me, and pictures of us playing together when I was little. I don’t remember much of it though.

He lived most of the time with his mom, who moved to Oregon at some point. He would come visit, stay for a while, and then leave, so he was never around for long periods of time. Kevin and I loved when he came to stay though, because he was FUN. He was tall and big and we pretty much used him as a human jungle gym, which must have been awesome for him, and he would bring us toys. I remember the year he brought us Nerf guns for Christmas. We ran around like maniacs shooting everything with the air-powered foam balls. SO FUN.

Sadly though, that is really all I remember about him. Being 9 years older than me, we never really had much in common and he stopped sending me birthday cards around my 10^th or 11^th He would have been 19 or 20 at that point, and had brothers from his mom’s marriages after my dad, so he had a whole other family world goin’ on in Oregon.

I don’t even know if he knows that we moved to Texas. He sort of cut us out a while ago. Maybe he just forgot about us?

I think about him often…more so now that I would actually be capable of flying to Oregon to hunt him down, but what would I say? Hi, I’m your 25 year-old sister that you haven’t seen since you were 18, let’s be friends! I don’t know why I think that is ridiculous though…if he randomly walked up to me and said the same thing I would throw my arms around him and be all Bro, we’ve got A LOT of catching up to do so let’s go get a beer and by the way, can I still climb up your shoulder like I used to?