Sixteen.

Today is New Year's Day, the beginning of 2012, the beginning of the first full year of Oliver, and the beginning of the eighth year in which Josh and I have existed as a couple (such an insufficient word). But what first comes to mind is that today is my brother's sixteenth birthday.

I was ten and a half when my brother was born a few weeks early. I remember New Year's Eve, preparing to go a party with church friends at the home of a boy I'd had a crush on for a long while. I was probably pondering how I could look especially pretty and be particularly charming. I went into my parents' room and saw my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, looking strange.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"We're going to go ahead to the hospital."
I remember very little about my mom's pregnancy--only the bizarre panel on her jeans (something I got to experience myself recently). I don't remember being worried about the earliness apart from realizing that I had a great deal of work to do on the little pillow I had been sewing for my brother (light blue, stuffed with cotton balls. The rush led me to move from cross-stitch to regular stitches for the words "Sweet Dreams James.").

I went to my party and spent the night at a friend's house. The next day, or maybe two days later, my dad came and brought a Polaroid Captiva (the little ones) shot of my brother, dark-haired and weepy-eyed, in a diaper and T-shirt. Maybe my dad explained that the wetness was eye drops rather than tears. My uncle Ross arrived and stayed with me at our house. I ate a TV dinner, and he ate a whole box-worth of mac and cheese straight out of the pot. We watched tapes of The Simpsons. I guess he was only eighteen or nineteen at the time. My mother was then twenty-six, like I am now.

So much, James's birth informed my understanding of babies and my approach to my son, especially initially. I remember my husband and father bringing me photos of Oliver in the NICU just after my surgery and hours before I would see or hold my son. I reminded myself that the terrible tears were only eye drops, and I remembered seeing that first photo of my brother. My knowledge of how to change a diaper, hold a baby, and other little things of which I'm probably not aware came from my helping care for my brother. Because my mother had been eight years older than her brother and had cared for him, she let me do (as I remember) quite a bit to help. Though I had been an only child for a decade and wasn't particularly thrilled about sharing my parents' attention, I loved my brother instantly.

But I didn't mean for this to be about my brother's birth. I can't believe he's sixteen. I remember sixteen so well. For me, it wasn't about driving, since I didn't get my license until I was starting college. I did get my first job. I began attending public school (the same school James now attends). At first, I wanted to try to be cool. I spent quite a bit of money ordering clothes from Alloy and Delia's. I do miss the sparkly jeans.

But during the course of that first semester, I delved into my first serious creative writing class, and my teachers began to encourage me and make me believe I was intelligent, bright, and creative. I took a theater class and portrayed Anne Frank in a scene with one of my first gay friends. I felt a shift. I don't remember what I wore the rest of the year, but I remember a thin blue bag with gold fringe--Funky People brand. In it, I carried SARK books, journals, Gelly Rolls, and sometimes loose glitter. I began spending my lunch periods reading in the library, working my way through a shelf. I remember reading Winesburg, Ohio (poor Oliver was almost Sherwood, partly in honor of that year of my life); and Rose in Bloom (Alcott's sequel to Eight Cousins). I read ahead in my honors English class, devouring Gatsby and Catcher. I had read The Bluest Eye for summer reading for that class, and the book terrified, shocked, and opened me. I wrote poems that didn't rhyme. I entered and placed in contests. I won a character award (I still don't know who nominated me). I filled journals madly, sometimes with less than two weeks to a volume. "Your mind will settle," my English teacher told me, "and you will slow down." I didn't want to. I decided to be creative, a writer, a reader.

Sixteen was the age at which I became myself and was very, very happy. The next year was hard, and every year since has had its pains. But I always remember sixteen as a sparkling sort of year. I hope James's sixteen will be that way too.