Okay...You have been introduced to my parents, NOW you get to meet my baby brother. Now many of you already know him, I have written many posts about him, but now you get to hear about him and his profound effect on my life.
Now as I told you before, my parents were older when I was born and I was enough of a surprise, but after I was born, my daddy had a longing for a boy, he begged my mom. She finally told him, we will try one time, if we become pregnant, this is it, girl or boy, this is the LAST ONE! Dad began praying and he got his boy :) Bryan Edward Canny came into the world at 1:30 pm on August 3rd. He would change the life of the Canny's forever. Now when he first came home and I got the chance to meet him, my parents say that I asked if he could be taken back. I really wanted nothing to do with him for a few days. I was the only pebble on the beach so to speak, and I kind of preferred it that way! However, within about a week, I went from not wanting him around to being completely inseparable from him! I quickly got the name "mother hen", as I doted on my brother. I was always wanting to take care of him.
This trend would be one that would carry on as we grew older. Bryan and I were very close and we did EVERYTHING together. I like to tell people that it is because of Bryan and I am a teacher, because from our early years, I was a teacher, teaching him everything I could. When I came home from preschool, I was teaching him all that I had learned. This was just something I loved to do!! His letters, shapes, numbers, colors, I just loved to teach him!! I also loved to take care of him, this went on not just when we were in elementary school. Although if anyone picked on my baby brother, they better be ready to hear from me! When we were in middle and high school, Bryan did not ALWAYS appriciate this :)
I have so many memories with my brother, its hard to pick which ones to share with you. But what I will tell you is that having him in my life has changed it forever, and I would not be who I am today without him! Here are a few of the lessons I have learned from having him in my life.
1- You Should Never Go Through Life Alone. I know that it is by the grace of God that I was given a brother. God knew that we would need one another to help us face some of the challenges that would come our way. As I said, from the time we were little, we were together. Now, my parents will tell you that from the day Bryan was born they knew that while we looked alot alike, they KNEW we were 2 very different kids :) I HATED to be alone. They would feed me my bottle, rock me to sleep, and I was fine, but the minute they tried to lay me down and leave the room, I SCREAMED!! I hated being alone, EVER! A trend that has carried on into my life, even now. Bryan on the other hand, give him his bottle, pat his back a few times, and then leave him alone, he preferred that to having someone hold him sometimes. As we grew older, Bryan loved to play alone, he was very content entertaining himself, NOT THIS GIRL! I was thankful for my playmate. I will not post them here, but I have some very embarassing pics of Bryan in some of my dresses, you see, I loved to dress him up in my clothes, like a lifesize doll if you will, and at the time, I was his big sister, if I told him to do it, he did it, no questions asked :) Bryan and I were quite different, and yet, we LOVED being together. Having each other would prove to be something that we would need as we continued to grow up. There were 3 times in our young lives that my mom had to go into the hospital for depression. This illness has become much more prevelant in the last few years, but let me tell you, that when we were little, depression was NOT something you talked about with people, and especially when you are in Elementary School, kids dont understand it at all. So, God had given us one another, so when we needed to cry, when we needed to talk about it, we didnt have to bottle it up, we had each other. This "secret" bonded us together. and taught us how to lean on one another through the tough times. I remember times that we would pray together, times that we would talk to each other across the hallway from our beds at night. This is why, when Bryan got married, it was SO HARD for me to let him go. I had to learn that I couldnt just lean on my brother, I had to rely on someone much greater, I had to learn to rely on God. But I learned through my relationship with Bryan that God has given us friends and family to get through this life, we are not meant to face it alone.
2- You cant take yourself too seriously, laugh often! Bryan and I both love to make people laugh. And we both love to make one another laugh too. We can both be quite sarcastic and at times, although not so much now, our jokes can be a little inappropriate. We LOVE watch comedies together. Jimmy Fallon is one of our favorites. Jim Gaffagin and Bryan Reegan too. We LOVE Saturday Night Live, the older years much better than the new years. We all have stories from our past and they could either embarass us or we can laugh at the memory. For example, when Bryan was little, we were on our way to the candy store one day. Bryan had a cup FILLED with money. I only had a couple coins....something that is still like us, Bryan was great at saving his money, I spent it as soon as I got it. :) I digress....he had this cup and dad was driving us to the candy store. Bryan didnt put his belt on and some how, he fell out of our car. I was trying to tell my dad, who was oblivious to what had taken place and kept on driving. He said, "Becky we will be there is just a minute", thinking I was just excited to get there. Finally he looked over, we were several yards away from Bryan now. And he realized his error. He put it in reverse and was getting back to his son. He ran out of the car, Bryan was fine, on the ground picking up his money. Dad got to him and Bryan was mad. "Dont touch me, Im fine, I just know I had more money than this and were not leaving until I have ALL of it!". Bryan was fine, but this is a memory that we have laughed about many many times since it happened.
Bryan and I have had many of those moments where we laugh. Laughter has been a friend to us through many of the dark times too. So Laugh, do it often and make sure those around you are laughing too.
3- Friends are the key to life. Bryan and I have both been very outgoing people from the time we were young. We just loved to have people around. Now again, we are somewhat different too. I thrive on it and would LOVE to have people around me all the time, never really needing alone time. Bryan, while he loves people, knows when he gets his fill and has to have his alone time too. But in our lives, we have had many great friends and most of the time, we shared our friends. We were just so close in age that we ended up hanging out with each others friends alot. I will tell you though, that when you choose to hang out with your brother and his teenage buddies, prepare to be a- kicked out of subway when they have loogey races on the windows and when one friend decides to lift his shirt and rub it on the window for his friends to see. b- kicked out of wal mart when they begin yelling at one another from across the store to see if they can hear each other on the other side. c- basically you never know when you will be kicked out of a place depending on their mode and ideas of the night. d- you will learn to love watching football or die trying to get away from it. e- you will also learn to love video games, and all about the systems on which they are played. HOWEVER, this also means that when your brother hangs out with you and your teenage girl friends he will a- learn to watch chick flicks and not complain when you all begin crying at the same time. b- learn about what make up works best and what colors go best with your skin. c- when your sister is the driver of the carpool, YOU WILL listen to boy bands such as NSync, Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, and LFO, and you might as well decided to learn the lyrics and sing along :) Yes, we had some great friends growing up and to this day are still friends with many of those people.
4- There is no better person to sing harmony with than your brother. I have been singing since I was 16 months old, and I think my love for music inspired my brothers love for music, of course, he is WAY more talented than I. If there is an instrument, he can probably pick it up and play it. Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keys, and he has a BEAUTIFUL voice too!!! I miss singing with him now that he lives in another country. Music as well as laughter got us through many things in life. My mother has a beautiful singing voice too, its kind of a bond we have with her. We know many of the old hymns because she loved to sing them to us. We have gotten the chance to do concerts together and its great. Our lives and some of our closest friends when we were younger stemmed from the Community Theatre. We loved being in plays and musicals. We also had our childrens choir at church and this was a HUGE part of our childhood, every Thursday afternoon we had practice and we did 2 musicals a year! Music is amazing, and singing is great, but having someone to sing harmony with, is something that you cant explain, you just have to experience it~!
5- Tough Love is some of the most important love! There are many times in our lives that we have had to show tough love to one another. We have had to be accountiblity partners to one another. In fact, just recently, Bryan had to call me out on alot of things. I HATED it, in fact we didnt speak for a while, but I realize now that he was doing it because he loved me so much! He said to me "Bec, I know that you are better than this, I know who you are, and THIS is not it! Do something to change it" Im paraphrasing, of course, but the idea is that he knew I wasnt living to the potential I had and he loved me too much to let me stay there. Tough Love is not always easy. But it is necessary.
6- Memories are some of the best parts of life. Weather its the stair way in our old house that we used to make sleds and slide down over and over and over again. Maybe its the cartoons we loved to watch together, or TGIF and SNICK. Maybe its all of our Christmas memories, or how every year on our birthdays we both got presents to open so that mom and dad didnt have to feel bad about someone not opening something. The years that we would go to Adventureland for your birthday parties and going to Happy Joes or Mc Donalds for mine. How when I was 5 years old and had to wear the patch for my lazy eye and your 3 year old brain honestly thought your sister was a pirate and you told all your friends at preschool. Or the time you swallowed the Windex at the daycare then then had to go to the ER and throw it all up. You had that little barf bucket from the ER for many years after :) Home Alone every year on Thanksgiving. OCT and all the memories from the plays that we were in, Kings Kids, we had so many parts in those plays ;), Bible Quizzing, you ALWAYS did better than me in quizzing :) You knew your Bible much better than me. BUT, I always got the spelling and penmanship awards! All our pound puppies and cabbage patch kids. those chipmunk dolls we had, we LOVED them! The time you got yourself stuck in the baby swing because you were way too old to be climbing in it and we had to get you out with a stick of butter. The time that you got stung by the bee and swelled up everywhere because we didnt know you were allergic. How about the Missions Trip to New York, you shaved a Checker Board in your head, we went on the Today Show crowd the next day and I got in trouble from mom because I "let" you do that to your hair :) We have so many memories together. And those memories are just part of the joy of having you as my little brother.
I could go on and on about my brother and all of the things he has taught me. I, like I said, am very thankful to have him in my life. We DONT always get along, in fact, if you have been around us for any length of time, you will know that we DO fight, and we are both hard headed and stubborn, hey were not red heads for nothing!, so our fights can be bad, because neither one of us likes to back down :) BUT, I have learned that no matter what, a brother is a brother, for all of your life. The good, the bad, the ugly, HE WILL ALWAYS LOVE ME!!!
Thank You Bryan for being such a huge part of my life. Thank You God for blessing me with my baby brother! I will be forever greatful.
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