If you want to read part one of "my" story go to my sisters blog.
I watched as the ground zoom under me as my plain touched the ground thinking "Is this real? Am I really home after eight months?"
I looked around as the people bustled around me to get to wherever they needed to go as I did the same.
I felt like a stranger in a world that had seemed to leave me behind and is now half heartedly welcoming me back with halls of neon signs like long outstretched arms where, on reaching my beaming family I felt the embrace. Every one of them happy to see me regardless of what I had done, accomplished or what stories I had to tell. They filled me in on the world that I had left and told me all the things that I had missed; The double rainbow guy, Justin Bebber, Julian Smith, Old Spice commercials and the baking dog man as we walked through the supper market full of choices that I had almost forgotten about.
I watched my girlfriend and my family thinking "So this is what a face that has missed her love and is with him again really looks like, this is what a mom and dad do when they get a son back, this is how a grown up little brother acts when he sees his brother and tries his best to be cool, this is how giddy little sisters giggle and this is how an older sister is. Looking to see if the brother that left her months ago is still who he was when he left."
I know I have changed a lot and seeing my family changed but the same made me realize how much I had changed. I'm no longer the kid that got the forbidden army solders at the dollar store or stuck his gum on the bubble gum wall down the street. I'm not the brother that carried the older sister on his back with her arms around his neck, while trying his best to breath. In the past moths I had processed my life, lined it up in my head. Trying to find out who I am and what I believe.
I missed my sister while I was gone. I forgot about all the things that she said that had become "Taylor-isms". things like "Oh, go bite a rock!", "Shut your tooth box" or "Really Zach? Really?..."
I always looked up to my sister for her drive, her determination, her tastes, her education. I gloated to my team about her 4.0 GPA and her full ride (and then some) scholarship. I told myself and others that I never really wanted that kind of lifestyle. That, that sort of thing just wasn't me but inside I wished that I could have done better. I was ashamed of my education and lack of drive.
I was unsure if that plexiglass relationship, that was strong and resilient but I somehow never noticed, had lost its strength or shine because of my lack of personal effort to let my family know how I was.
I was there. She made the same funny remarks she always did that I used to get so mad about as I told the same meandering stories of my exploits and injuries I had in emails. But she was changed too. She was a person that had learned about the world around her, saw it for what it was and what it could be. She had built a network of friends (Cute collage friends) that I was jealous of. She had come out of the shell that used to put her one step behind me in social situations. She had developed a deeper and more unapologetic style that set her apart from the people she spent her time with. But I know it's true. Even if Taylor is different, which I know she must be, she will still be my sister, and she will always be there for me, and I will be there for her. Even if one of us is in Africa and the other is in college.
