Being the baby of the family

Today my brother Mark turns 58 years young. This Monday, my sister Debbie will hit the big 60-year milestone.

And if she were still with us, my sister Judi would be 62.

All of which makes me feel comparatively like a spring chicken at age 45.

(NOTE: I suddenly wondered where that phrase "spring chicken" came from, so of course I Googled it. If the Internet at large is to be believed – and honestly, when is that really ever a good idea? – it has something to do with the fact that in olden times they didn't have incubators and the like, so chicks couldn't be raised during the winter. Quoting from one site, "New England growers found that those [chicks] born in the spring brought premium prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest that the bird was 'no spring chicken.'" So there you go.)

Anyway, I have siblings who are a bit older than I am, so I grew up essentially an only child. Judi got married when I was 2, Mark got married and joined the Air Force round about the time I entered kindergarten, and Debbie was out of the house by the time I was 7.

The result is that while I'm the baby of the family chronologically, I grew up more like a one-and-done kid.

Of course, I was spoiled like the baby should be, as my siblings have always been quick to point out. My response is that Mom and Dad finally got themselves a perfect child on their fourth attempt, so naturally they would want to lavish gifts on that child.

But really, in my formative years, my siblings were more abstract than real.

Mark was stationed first in Greece and then in South Korea, so we only saw him a couple of times a year. Judi came over on the weekends, but it's not like I ever really lived with her. And Deb spent thousands of hours working and eventually running her salon, and to this day I see her only for my every-two-weeks haircut.

My wife is also the baby of her family, and her experience there was much more traditional, as she's much closer in age to her siblings. In old family pictures, she's always the small, shy one, never far from her mother and seemingly rarely smiling.

I'm not sure if that is (or should be) the typical last-child experience. Usually, youngest kids are pretty happy people, in part because, as we said, they're spoiled. And in part because their parents are exhausted by years of child-rearing, so they tend to have fewer rules and relatively few constraints. Life is good for us young'uns!

This is all my twisted way of saying happy birthday today to my big bro Mark and the same to my big sis Deb in a few days. You guys, while perhaps not as perfect as your youngest sibling, still deserve to have a great day.

Which it will be when I call you to sing "Happy Birthday." What birthday is complete without hearing from The Spoiled One in your family?