Thread: Brothers
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Old 07-09-2011, 07:59 AM   #17
Diana Frese
Dojo: Aikikai of S.W. Conn. (formerly)
Location: Stamford Connecticut
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 386
United_States
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Re: Brothers

Hi, Niall, I was helping my husband at work and just got back to this thread to add my own DNA report. My Dad grew up in NYC due to asthma he was mostly raised by his grandparents, his sister stayed in New Jersey with their mother. My aunt had ear problems, in childhood. I think there was an improperly done ear operation.

I'm my parents' last kid by many years. My second brother is nine and a half years older, he had encephalitis as a baby so first lived with a psychologist and her mother and another patient or so, then to special schools until age thirty when there were suitable programs and medications here.

But noone should really feel sorry for him, he was in Special Olympics for years, writes a lot of letters to teachers and friends and relatives he has known for many years and has genealogy and photography as hobbies, and is devoted to the local church and "church friends."

Our brother, the oldest is eleven and a half years older than I. He is a pretty quiet type, which evidently was a quality prized by the older relatives, to which I, the brat, never succeeded in conforming.
(Maybe I was ADHD or something, at a high school reunion, a former classmate looked at me when I mentioned it . She said that I definitely was ) Anyhow the oldest brother was into sailing and skiing.

Dad liked sailing and was a club tennis champ for many years, then joined groups for over seventy, over eighty. My parents died in a car crash returning from stitches removal, Mom was driving and they evidently fell asleep, maybe he had been under some anaesthetic and dozed off and the conversation lapsed... The important thing is he, at age 85 had challenged his friends and his doctor to tennis matches when the eye would have healed (cornea transplant)

Mom was a very active gardener up until age 83 when they died.

Maybe this makes me slightly Klingon in ancestry? (Although I do admire the logical Spock, the adventurous Kirk, the careful but spirited Uhura, and the practical and empathic Dr McCoy and all the others)

Dad and Mom moved to the country but the asthma caused Dad to choose activities at the shore...

So I have a strange theory, maybe it's also likely that a kid who's the youngest by many years might strike out in a direction different from the others. Also I went to school in upstate New York and due to the winters there had to find some way of getting exercise and judo was fun ....

Oh well, enough about me for now, except for one tennis story. I hit a shot unexpectedly and to my surprise, then told Dad I must have gotten a couple of extra inches in my shoulder joint from the judo at college

I think the example of family members dedicated to some sport or active hobby helps, in the case of the youngest.
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