Ben Braeden

wayward_sons21 verse

Five favorite holiday memories

1. The first Easter after Wash moved in with us. The stories of the Easter Bunny kept him up all night with one of the kitchen knifes in his hands, muttering about how huge bunnies handing out colored eggs was not cool, and he would kill it if it tried to eat him.

Mom wasn't happy with me the next morning for mentioning that the bunny had razor sharp teeth.


2. that following Christmas. Because this time Wash had a BBGun and was in the livingroom with it aimed at the chimney. I actually got grounded on that one, and she proceeded to explain that Santa left coal for bad little boys and girls, not turned them INTO coal.


3. The Thanksgiving when I was 6, and I had realized just how good the skin of the turkey tasted. My grandpa kept telling me not to take it because it would dry the turkey out, but within an hour I had stripped the whole bird. And while I was sick to my stomach in the back room from eating all that, my Mom and grands had dinner and used up all the gravy to make the turkey not so tough.

4. The Thanksgiving back when I turned 19. My grands had passed away that year from pneumonia, and Mom was still sick because she had been taking care of them. So Wash and I decided to try and cook dinner. I think we ended up wearing most of it, but we managed to save enough to have dinner that night and not resort to eating out. I also learned never to let Wash try to stuff a turkey again.

5. The first Christmas after the Pulse. We had no money, so my mom and I decided that we were just going to go to church for the holiday and sing. That Christmas was going to be one about faith. But when we got there, the nuns had this HUGE tree and the choir kids were standing in front of a pile of present. There were mothers there as well, handing out baskets of food to other mothers, and the priests had set up this banquet of food to feed the entire congregation after Mass was over. I had never seen my mother cry so much that day, and the little game of magnetic checkers I got went everywhere with me for years in my backpack. It taught me that even in the darkest times, having faith in something would always surprise you with how it can heal a hurting world.

Talk about the one person you know you can trust. What makes you trust them?

Wash is probably the person I trust the most. I mean, he is my brother after all - my red headed adoptive brother, but a brother none the less.

As we got older and had to move to a different part of Cicero, the kids there tended to dislike me. Maybe it was my attitude, or my height, or the fact that I knew demons were real and no one wanted to believe me. Whatever it was, I had a bit of a hard time making friends. Girlfriends, not so hard, but I wasn't stupid enough to let one go when I had one. Of course, having two or three at the same time... that's a different story.

Wash, however, was always there for me. He would listen to my issues and help me figure them out. He was there to knock some sense into me when I was being an idiot, and to give me a pat on the back when I figured things out. He didn't baby me (most of the time) and gave me advise that I didn't have a father around to give me.

Yeah, I can trust Wash with just about anything. That's what brothers are for.


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