HONY Part 1
"For my eighth birthday I received a Barbie dollhouse that I’d been dreaming about for months. Gene wanted to play with it too—because he loved all things make-believe. But after a few hours he sat down on the dollhouse and crushed it. He cried so hard afterwards. He kept promising that he’d pay me back. I was probably mad about it for a few days, but of course I forgave him. Because Gene was just Gene. His physical disabilities were obvious-- but it was much more than that.
Gene couldn’t understand the things that the rest of us understood. Even though he was my older brother, I still tied his shoes for him. I still held his hand when we crossed the street. We knew he hadn’t always been disabled, because we had baby pictures lying around the house. There was no dent in his head. No shrunken arm. But my mother never really discussed what happened to him. Occasionally she’d mention ‘the accident,’ but we always assumed it was a car wreck. And we were living on an army base in Germany, so there was no family around to tell us differently. But I never pressed her on it.
We were just kids, and Gene’s disabilities never bothered me. We spent our days getting into good mischief. We’d explore empty buildings. We’d play in drain pipes. One time we decided that it was time for Gene to ride a bicycle. My mother would have never allowed it, because he was paralyzed on the left side of his body. And he wore a full set of Forrest Gump leg braces. But it was something he’d always wanted to do, so one afternoon I hoisted him up onto my little pink bike. He wouldn’t even let me use the training wheels. I used my shoelace to tie his one good foot to the pedal, and I pushed him as hard as I could. It was a magical ten seconds. Then he toppled over onto the concrete. When he stood up there was road rash all over his body. But Gene didn’t seem to mind. He has this thing—when he gets excited, his left arm flies up in the air. He has no control over it. And on that day his arm was raised completely above his head. He screamed a war cry. Like a victorious king. And it’s still my favorite memory of him, all these years later. Because it captures his spirit so well.”
