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By Timothy Deal
November 11, 2015

Twenty years ago, something happened that forever changed my life: my baby sister was born on my birthday.

It was an astonishing event that had been foretold months before. My parents had announced that the new baby’s due date was around November 11. After the initial shock had faded, I was left with the deepening sense of fatalism that only an eleven-year-old boy who knows in his soul that he will likely forever have to share his birthday with another can experience. I dreaded that no longer would my special day be about me, but it would be about some smaller, cuter lifeform. As the eldest sibling, I had seen it happen before; the youngest kids got all the attention. I would have resolved to face the future with stoicism, if I knew what the word meant at the time.

We celebrated my twelfth birthday the night before, just in case. And sure enough, early in the morning on November 11, 1995, my dad woke me up to let me know he and Mom were heading toward the hospital. It was as I had foreseen. I confess I gave my mother a somewhat accusatory look before they left, as if to say, “I’m not angry with you, Mom. Just disappointed.”

After the the birth of three previous baby sisters, it was beginning to feel routine to be brought over to Grandma’s house while Mom and Dad were at the hospital. When Dad called to say Mom and newborn baby Danielle were safe and healthy, of course we were all happy, but then my conversation with Dad went something like this:

“So…another girl, huh, Dad?”

“So…another girl, huh, Dad?”

“Yeah…another sister.”

“….”

“….Yep. Sorry, looks like we’re still gonna be the only men in the family.”

“Well…that’s life.”

Okay, so I don’t know if that’s really what I said, but that was kinda my attitude at the time. It wasn’t entirely the best, but from a twelve-year-old’s perspective it’s hopefully understandable.

What I didn’t realize at the time was just how much fun it would turn out to be having a baby sister as a teenager. Little Danielle quickly stole my heart with her chubby cheeks, shiny hair, huge smile, and imaginative personality. In her preschool/kindergarten ages she delighted in grabbing onto my legs, climbing all around me while I was lying on the couch, and generally treating me as one of her most beloved toys that she could pose and ride on. (One of her strangest ideas during this period were her attempts to make me “relax,” which apparently involved looking disinterested in the world while holding specific poses.)

As Danielle grew, she continued to delight and surprise all of my family with her boundless creativity which found expression in drawings, costumes, stories, unusual pet chicken names, hieroglyphs made of crushed dandelions, oral histories of imaginary worlds, ceremonies to mark new seasons, sketchings, rubbings, paintings, designs, calligraphy, photography, and probably a lot more that I’ve forgotten. As a creative nerd, I love being able to share my interests with all my sisters, but I’ve had some of my deepest conversations about creativity and favorite stories with Danielle. She has continued to inspire creativity in me during times when I felt creatively dry. And I hope to reciprocate that inspiration as much as possible.

And instead of being a burden, sharing my birthday with my baby sister has turned out to be a huge blessing. As a friend of the family correctly predicted, I wound up getting more attention (and more presents) during my teenage and young adult birthdays because I shared them with my kid sister. While she was still small enough, it was a fun tradition to have Danielle sit on my lap while we blew out our candles, and we still get a kick out of anticipating our special day day or calling/texting/telling each other Happy Birthday when it arrives.

So with all of that said, Happy Birthday, Danielle! Thanks for being the best birthday present I’ve ever been given.

By Timothy Deal
June 26, 2015

Continuing in our June theme of sequels, today I offer the next lesson I learned at my Grandma’s house. It’s not a lesson many would expect from a grandparent, but it remains relevant for today’s culture and I’ve recently been trying to remind myself of it more often.

2. Try out new technology but don’t become beholden to it.

Not my Grandparents’ Mac. FirmBee / Pixabay

When Grandma bought a Macintosh in the early to mid-‘90s, it was partly for my aunts who were in college at the time, but also for her grandchildren. Personal computers were just coming into their own and she wanted us to be able to learn how to use them. Grandma’s house was probably the first place I encountered CD-ROMs, heard the otherworldly sounds of a dial-up modem, and surfed the primitive waters of the World Wide Web. It was an exciting glimpse into the future that helped prepare me for the technology-soaked world we live in today.

At the same time, Grandma, Grandpa, and the rest of the family rarely cared to jump on every technology bandwagon that came along. Though my teenage aunts had owned an original Nintendo system for years, they saw little need to get a Super Nintendo when it came out; it seemed a money grab in the name of a slight improvement in graphics. We made do with the Macintosh for years past its prime. And if memory serves me right, Grandma thought my parents were basically betraying the VHS format when we got a DVD player before them.

I think this sort of attitude toward technology is somewhat reflected in my own habits. Certainly, I use a lot of technology in my video work and use the Internet heavily in my everyday life, but I’ve always had a fondness for old tech and rarely feel the urge to upgrade to the newest models.

In fact, I only bought my first smartphone a few weeks ago, almost eight years after I first played with a friend’s iPhone. I always thought smartphones looked neat, but for awhile they seemed to me an unnecessary expense. Plus, there was a certain liberation in not being tied down to a device that seems to command so much of people’s attention. But eventually, I needed to replace my cell phone and the time seemed right to finally pick up my own iPhone. As with any new tech, it’s been fun to explore, but I also want to remember the lesson I first learned back at Grandma’s house.

Being aware of and experimenting with current technology is valuable; but because that technology is always changing, finding contentment with whatever you own is even better. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with upgrading when need arises. Yet there’s a relief in the realization that you don’t always have to.

by Timothy Deal
May 21, 2015

In our end-of-year blog back in December, I observed that changes in the path of life are sometimes marked by prominent monuments. The death of a family member is certainly one such monument; it was when my grandpa passed away in December and was again when my grandma followed him home to Heaven last month. By definition, a monument should cause us to remember and learn from the past. In thinking about the many experiences I had at my grandparents’ home, I realized how much those times formed who I am today and how much my grandparents taught me, even if often indirectly.

I had initially aimed to summarize the lessons learned from these memories in five main points, but even that was turning out to be way too much material for a single blog post.  So I decided to first share one that most relates to a topic we talk about a lot on this site. If it connects with people, then perhaps I’ll share the other four lessons over the next few months

1. An entertaining story can bring a family together.

The summer of ’88 was a very hot one in Indiana. The house my family was living in at the time did not have air conditioning, but Grandma’s house did, so we spent several nights that summer camped out in their family room where the AC was strongest. Blankets were laid out on the floor in front of the big TV, popcorn was served in wooden bowls, and the entire family sprawled about in their PJs for a movie night. Since I was only four years old at the time, most of those movies went way over my head, but I kept fuzzy recollections of ‘80s comedies like The Dream Team, The Money Pit, and The Incredible Shrinking Woman for years afterwards because the experience of getting together to watch these stories was so strongly imprinted on my mind.

This, kids, is what we watched before Netflix. DS-Foto / Pixabay

The other piece of wondrous technology that Grandma & Grandpa had that made such movie nights possible was a VCR, which my family also didn’t have for awhile. (Not until I was six! That’s like forever when you’re that age.) Like any Grandma, ours was wont to spoil us occasionally, so she always kept a collection of cartoon videos around for her grandchildren. Each of us had our favorite Disney movies that we liked to watch over and over. She also bought a copy of The Great Muppet Caper for her collection when I asked her for it and thus began my lifelong obsession with the Muppets.

But the cartoons and kid’s movies weren’t just for the grandchildren. My grandfather, who tended to watch war movies and could be a very private man at times, nevertheless also loved cartoons and often joined his grandkids to watch Bugs Bunny, Popeye, or whatever funny cartoon we happened to be watching. I’ve also been told that when I was a toddler Grandma would rewind a certain Looney Tunes cartoon over and over because I would always laugh and giggle at some bird with a goofy walk. (Unfortunately, that particular tape has been lost to time, so I can’t tell you if the same bird makes me laugh today.)

At its best, movie or TV watching wasn’t a passive activity at Grandma’s house. As the stories made us laugh or hide behind a pillow, we shared the experience together. We’d talk about the stories as we watched them and sometimes the kids would pull ideas from the stories for our play time. (We had a weird ongoing game called “Crocodile” that I suspect may have been inspired by Peter Pan.) There’s no doubt in my mind that those times were an important factor in my love for movies and stories today.