10 years and 10 months to the day. That is the amount of distance between me and my closest sibling. I am the baby of 7 children. My mother had 5 children within 6 years. The oldest of the Bastian children, Jack, is my half brother from my father’s first marriage.
When my parents told my brothers and sisters that my mother was pregnant with me, the laughed. They all thought that my parents were joking. After all my oldest brother had just turned 22. And as if that wasn’t strange enough, he had a 3 year old daughter.
Growing up I had a happy childhood. I have no real complaints (and if you ask a couple of my siblings they would say I better not complain and recall what a spoiled brat I was). I was rather spoiled. I was the picture of the spoiled baby of a family. Always getting my way and doing things they were not only never allowed to do but also that they would have been strictly punished for.
As happy as my childhood was, there has always been one thing missing, something I longed for desperately. A deep and unwavering bond with one of my brothers or sisters. I watched them do things together that I was always too young to do and none of them wanted to drag along their bratty little sister. I watched them become adults and leave the nest, leaving me alone. I became a very rebellious teenager and I got “the speech” from them all, but ignored it because “they didn’t know me” and like ever other teenager on the planet I knew everything. All you ever had to do was ask.
They all grew up in a very different household than I did. By the time I was about 5 all but one of them had moved out. They grew up with a stay at home mother and a father who was in the Air Force. I grew up with a mom that worked and a dad who once he retired from the Air Force went on to work in the trucking industry. They grew up with their father being the leader of the family while the father I grew up was not a constant figure in my life because he was gone a lot at work, and my mother that ran things. They were shuffled from airbase to airbase, living in places that vary from Louisiana to Germany. The house I grew up in my parents purchased 3 years before I was born, and we never moved.
I got to hear stories of their adventures. Kathy almost downing in a creek after my brothers had dammed it up while playing with the G.I. Joe’s. The boys going out to play in Louisiana and my mother looking out to see that while playing they had caught snakes and skinned them, only after which they learned the snakes were highly venomous water moccasins. The time in Den Haag Holland when my father removed fish hooks from a baby porcupine while the family was camping. Or when my father was chased up onto an air conditioning unit by an armadillo that had found its way into their backyard in Louisiana. All things I wasn’t around to witness. All things I was constantly jealous of because I was not part of those memories.
When I was fairly young there was a falling out between my oldest brother Jack and my father, the details of which even now at age 36 I am not entirely privy to. For the majority of my childhood Jack and the family did not speak. When I was 14 and at the beginning of my angst ridden teen years, I sought Jack out. I found out he was working at a local shelter for runaway children and “push outs”, the term for children whose parents had kicked them out. I so desperately wanted that bond, that connection that my brothers and sisters had that I ran away. I knew where I was going. I was going to get a brother. I just knew that once we met it would be like we had never been apart. I was his baby sister after all and I knew that he must have pined over me for all these years. I just KNEW he wanted to have me as a major part of his life. And while he did welcome me with open arms, there was one thing I didn’t factor in. Time had not stood still for my brother since I had last seen him. Jack was now 36, and while I know he loved me because I was his sister, that same nasty roadblock popped up. The age gap was huge. We were not going to hang out. I was a teenager and he was a grown up. During those years apart there is little doubt that he might have missed me, but in my dramatic teenage girl mind I had certainly misjudged my importance in his life. Never the less I was determined to get what I had come for.
My relationsip with Jack has been strange to say the least. After our first meeting I clung to him, desperate to build a connection. I was re-introduced to his wife, Sandy. Jack was always an odd man. He had been 18 the day he arrived in the states. He had made his way to New york, where he called my grandmother Bastian, who was the only number he had. She then called my parents and said that Jack was in New York, and she was sending him the money to fly to Ohio. She told my parents that Jack would be staying in Marion with her and my great aunt. My mother told my father no, he was coming to Dayton. That Jack was his son, and this is where he should be. My other siblings did not even know he existed. How my siblings were made aware that they had a brother from my father’s previous marriage was at dinner time the night he arrived. My parents sat the others down and explained that they in fact had an older brother, and that they had to leave to pick him up at the airport. Upon arriving in Dayton, Jack had hair to his shoulders. Something Gene and Steve took notice of immediatly. As per my father’s orders, the boys were not permitted to have anything but a very short military type hair cut. Jack arrived and was thrown into the mix. The rumors I have been told was that there was a noticable rift between Jack and my brother Gene, because before Jack entered the picture Gene was the oldest child. Being ousted from that seat must have been difficult, and it created tension between the two. I do not know the details of everything that happened, so I only have the whispers shared by my mother and other siblings to go by.
Fast forward 20 years. Today I have a decent relationship with my oldest brother. We speak occasionally by phone and about once every other year I will get a wild hair up my butt and just drop by to see him. He only lives about 45 minutes away. Things between us have always been good, just never “close” per say. Every conversation centers around my father and the fact that Jack does not feel as though my father ever cared for him. As unfortunate as it is, that is the biggest bond Jack and I share. I wish i could say that the brother i sought out was found in Jack, but hurt feelings about our father and the rift between Jack and the others always seemed to stand squarely in the way of us ever being very close. And Jack’s own feelings of not belonging, my father never being proud of him, and in general the two of them never being close.
Prior to coming to the states Jack had a daughter, Teresa. She is three years older than me. I met her for the first time when I was 15, and instantly I was mezmerized. She was loud, opinionated, and cooler than words can describe. Even now, i see her through rose colored glasses. She stayed with Jack and Sandy for a short time and then returned to England. She then met and fell in love with Michelle, who to date she has been with for 15 years. Now she lives in Luxemburg with Michelle and their pluthora of cats. We remain in contact and hopefully by this time next year she will visit.
My oldest full blown sibling is Gene. He is about 5 years younger than Jack, which would have made him 17 when I was born. Gene joined the marines when I was 2. He married his high school sweetheart, Chris, and they pretty much immediately moved to Beaufort, South Carolina. One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my brother David’s shoulders as he walked around Gene and Chris’s home. I can vividly remember hearing “crunch, crunch, crunch” with every step he made. Once I got a little older I asked about the sound. It happened to be Fiddler crab mating season in South Carolina when we went to visit and because my brother Gene lived so close to the ocean his home was surrounded by thousands of them. The sound I so distinctly remember was the tiny crabs under my brothers big boots. I was on his shoulders so the crabs wouldn’t “get” me. After Beaufort Gene and Chris moved a number of times. For a brief period Chris and their two children, Joe and Jenny, moved back to Ohio while Gene was deployed to Iwakuni, Japan. Other than that their family never lived in Ohio again. My brother never truly had residence in Ohio after 1976. Needless to say my relationship with Gene was never truly one of brother and sister. Well not the brother sister relationship I have in my head at least. When I was in my teens he was little more than annoyed with me. I was as I said before quite angst ridden. Add to that spoiled and defiant. Again, we grew up in very different households. He was raised on military bases, and such behavior would never have been tolerated. More over, he just thought I needed whipped into shape. Or submission. I doubt he would disagree with either description. For the majority of my childhood Gene was based in California. And if you glance at a map, California and Ohio are on opposite ends of the country. A ironic metaphor for my relationship with my brother perhaps?
So in summary, Gene was gone before I really could ever form a relationship with him. Hell he was gone before I could form most words. Which I am sure if you asked him, is the way he preferred it. He ended up retiring from the Marine Corps (hoorah, Semper Fi do or die), and has moved a little closer to Ohio. Just close enough to visit for the holidays and some during the summer. But far enough away that when he has had enough of the family and the drama he can retreat back to his house with little fear that any of it will follow.
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