Karen has three siblings, all older, two sisters and one brother.
Her brother Mike is celebrating his 35th birthday today. He could be classified as something of a free spirit and independent thinker, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum.
I remember when I first met him. Karen and I (we’d been dating for a year or two and were still in school) were waiting for him in front of the Boston Public Library. He had moved to the Boston area after graduating from college in DC and was living in a house outside the city with some friends.
He’s about six foot five and, when I first saw him, had HUGE pork chop sideburns. He informed us that he had been growing them in honor of Elvis since the anniversary of his birth.
I also remember him as having long hair and dreadlocks at the time, but in actuality, I don’t think I ever saw him with dreadlocks. He did have them at one point, but it was before I met him. I think I merged the two different incarnations of him, ‘Elvis-Mike’ and ‘Marley-Mike,’ because it’s such a compelling visual image.
Needless to say, he made an impression. He’s a great guy – the life of the party with a unique sense of humor and generous to a fault. He has a certain mystique about him – free spirited, offbeat, unbound by the usual chains of convention. As time went by, the mystique continued to grow.
Not long after I met him, the house he and his friends were living in was sold (apparently, it was owned by a relative of one of its inhabitants). At this point, he decided to essentially live out of his car (which was about 30 years old), camping at a different location on a suburban college campus each night and showering at the Y. At least the weather was warm, because he was basically homeless for a summer.
Around this time, he and his college sweetheart (now wife) had decided to get back together. She lived in Hawaii. His plan was to drive cross-country (in his ‘car’), stopping at assorted points of interest and national parks, to catch a flight to Hawaii.
His ‘car’ made it to Connecticut before dying. Fortunately, he was able to hook up with one of those companies that hires people to drive cars across the country. The good news was that he drove a pretty nice car to California. The bad news was that he was on a timeline and couldn’t meander from spot to spot as he had originally planned.
So he makes it to Hawaii and is living in paradise (literally and figuratively). He gets a job working part-time as a waiter at the California Pizza Kitchen. His girlfriend is a flight attendant. He has a lot of free time to surf, golf, play volleyball, etc. At one of Karen’s family functions, when the topic of Mike came up, there was some concern expressed because he wasn’t building any equity, at which point, one of the male relatives says the following: “Hold on a second! He lives in Hawaii, he works part-time, his girlfriend’s a flight attendant, and he spends most of his time surfing and playing golf? What are we doing wrong!?” Following this statement, one of the people in attendance declared Mike his hero and requested a poster of him to hang at his house.
So why am I telling you all this? Well, first of all, because I find him interesting and the idea of him extremely entertaining.
Second of all, because today is his birthday. (So happy birthday, Mike, if you ever read this, but if you do, it’s pretty unlikely it will be on your birthday, so, rather than ‘Happy Birthday!’, I guess it’s, ‘Hey, Mike, hope you don’t mind me sharing details of your life from my skewed perspective with the blogosphere…”)
Third of all, we haven’t seen him and our sister-in-law in awhile. Perhaps more importantly (sorry Mike and Lori), we have yet to meet our niece, who was born in September. Thankfully, we may very well be meeting her (and seeing them) this summer*, which we’re VERY excited about. We’ve seen lots of pictures, and we’ve done some web cam calls, but it’s just not the same. It kills me that my niece is almost ten months old and we have yet to see her or hold her. But hey, 5,000 miles is quite the distance.
Charlotte and Luke are also very excited to see/meet their newest cousin. They mention her frequently, and they take the role of cousin very seriously. They also miss their aunt and Uncle – we visited them last year, and also traveled to Hawaii for their wedding (Charlotte was the flower girl, Luke was in utero) the previous year.
So it will be a happy day indeed when we do get together.
Have a great Fourth July!
I hope you enjoyed today’s serving of ‘mac & cheese’ (while holding a sparkler).
