Anything to Win

Dad hates to lose. At anything. Even checkers.

Every Christmas we set up the checkerboard on the floor in front of the tree for our annual tournament. Sometimes it lasts for days with all of us fervently trying to oust Dad. One by one, however, he knocks us out.

On a Sunday afternoon after Christmas, I'm waging a fierce battle to win my first checkers' game against Dad. Just once, before I graduate from high school, I desperately want to beat Dad. To my disbelief, he makes a clumsy move, and I double jump.

Christmas Day, 1973: All of us except Mick (who's taking the pic)

"I win!" I shout in exultation. In astonishment Dad stares at the board. My brothers and sisters clap my back, and I rise flushed with triumph.

"Sit down," Dad commands. "We're playing again. That one didn't count." Dad's famous for making up his own rules.

"I can't play again, Dad!" I say. "The Grahams are picking me up to babysit in ten minutes."

"Sit down!" he orders.

I lose that checkers' game as fast as I can and flee out the door to my babysitting job. When I return, Dad is sulking, but Mick is beaming.

"Mick won the tourney!" my little brothers and sisters can't wait to tell me.

Dad doesn't take it well. During the game, when Mick hesitates and lifts his finger from a checker piece, Dad roars. "You can't change your mind! Once you put your finger on a checker, you're committed!"

Then Dad moves with vehement momentum. But he makes the fatal mistake of lifting his finger from his own checker.

"You can't do that!" Mick shouts. "Once you put your finger on a checker, you're committed!" Dad's face turns purple. He loses the game. Then he sweeps the board clean of every checker piece and storms out of the room fuming with rage.

Dad's outrageous behavior doesn't surprise us in the least. In the middle 60's living in Denver, Dad is a loyal Denver Broncos' fan but earns a troublesome reputation for the time he threatens the officials. Storming out of the stadium in a huff after a dramatic loss, Dad sees the refs making a quick getaway in their vehicle. Our 6 ft. 7 inch, 260 pound father plants himself in front of their car and pounds on the hood in rage. He attracts a small crowd of equally enraged fans, and in a matter of seconds, the carful of officials is surrounded by an angry mob of the Denver Bronco faithful. Thankfully, the vehicle escapes and squeals out of the parking lot. Dad and his posse of hit men shake their fists after them.

We can hardly believe at the time that our good, steady father, who preaches honesty and responsibility and integrity, would do such a thing. As we grow older, though, it's clear that Dad has a problem. He cheats at family tennis tournaments and even at our driveway basketball games. No matter how insignificant the contest, Dad must win at any cost.  One day when Mick brings home his high school buddies, Dad suggests a friendly game of basketball in the driveway.

"The girls and I'll take on all of you," he challenges.

Twelve-year-old Terri, though, is so besotted with one of Mick's cute friends that she misses a layup. Dad quickly sizes up the problem and stops the game.

Dad, Christmas 1973

"You're not concentrating," he frowns at Terri. "Get down and give me ten."

Terri is horrified. "Dad!" she pleads.

"Ten push-ups!" Dad roars.

But Terri will die before she performs push-ups in front of Mick's cute friends. She abandons our team and sprints into the house.

Dad loses his composure at every one of our Central Catholic sporting events. He shouts so loudly and so often that Sister Mary Leo and Sister Sue, who are very fond of Dad, make it a point to sit in front of him in hopes their holy presence will curb his tongue. It does no good.

"Are you the mayor of Holdrege?" he screams at a ref from a nearby town who mistakenly gives my brother Joe an extra foul. He even marches down to give the scorekeeper a talking to, much to Joe's humiliation.

Dad, however, saves his worst behavior for a friendly city league basketball game at Stolley Park Elementary Gym. Joe, Mick and Rick are all playing, and the entire family goes to cheer them on. It's not a school game or even a very important one. Dad thinks it is. The ref is a guy off the street hired by the city to earn 20 bucks.

"Ref!" Dad screams. "Do your job! You're not paid to pick your nose out there!"

When Mick is undercut in a cheap shot move, Dad becomes apoplectic. "You are the WORST official in this town! In the state!" His voice echoes across the gym. Everyone stares at us. Like she always does, Mom makes a vain attempt to quell Dad's enthusiasm.

"He's doing his best, Dickie," she gently nudges Dad. "Leave the poor boy alone!"

The official - a small, timid guy who probably agrees to ref as a favor to a buddy- suddenly has had enough. He stops the game, furiously blows his whistle, and strides determinedly across the court to confront Dad.

"Out!" he shouts at Dad. "Take everybody in your family and get out!"

You can hear a pin drop in the little gymnasium. Mom is red-faced, and the rest of us want only to die.  But Dad is all at once terrifyingly calm. He rises, towering over the the little ref, then turns to us. "Patti, Kids," he says with grave dignity. "We're leaving now."

There is not a sound  as we climb out of the bleachers. Dad assists Mom, who is holding our baby brother Jeff, navigate the steps. Then he marches out of the gym. The rest of us follow in single file, our echoing footsteps loud in the thundering silence. It is the single most humiliating moment in any of our lives.

"What's wrong with him?" I wail to my mother later at home. I think of my friends who witness our mass exodus from the gym. Tomorrow at school, the Browns will be the talk of the town.

Mom sits beside me and sighs. "Don't you see?" She studies the pattern of the sofa. "Your dad refuses to be defeated. It's his way of protecting us. And himself."

This makes no sense to me. I've heard stories of Dad's stormy relationship with his own mother in Pittsburgh where he grows up. With the urging of his Aunt Marge in Colorado, Dad earns a basketball scholarship to Regis University in Denver and leaves his home in Pittsburgh forever. He vows never again to ask his parents for help and makes it through college entirely on his own. Eventually, he marries Mom who loves him and believes in him, raises ten kids who worship him, and never asks for help from anyone.

"You know how proud he is. He gets scared sometimes," Mom explains, "but he won't give into fear. He simply won't accept defeat."

Suddenly, I'm thinking of a late summer day in Denver when I am seven. Dad has promised my brothers and me a ride on the big boat at City Park Lake. We are beside ourselves with excitement. When we arrive at the park, however, falling out of the car in excitement, the boat man tells us we're too late.

"Just took the last group out. We're done for the day," he calls behind his shoulder dismissively.

My brothers and I are so disappointed, we cry. Back in the car, we depart in dejected silence. But Dad suddenly turns around and heads back to the lake. "We're going on that boat ride," he says with steely determination.

Hope is alive.

We never know what Dad says to the boat man. Does he offer him money? Dad strolls back to the car. We wait in nervous excitement.

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" he pretends to be impatient. "We're going on a boat ride!"

All these years later, I don't even remember the boat ride. But I remember thinking that there is nothing my dad can't do.

I lean on Mom's shoulder. I may be almost 18-years-old, but I still rely on her wisdom and love. I will never completely understand Dad. He can be stubborn and irrational and proud. But he's also funny and loving and bigger than life. When Dad walks through the door after work every evening, we're happy to see his big, smiling face. He makes us feel safe.

Sighing against my mother's shoulder, I suppose Dad's worth the trouble - even if we do get kicked out of Stolley Park School Gymnasium.

And even if he cheats at checkers.

The Terrible Brother

Every girl needs a good brother - a brother who will protect her, love her - even give his life for her.

My sisters and I are not familiar with those brothers. Joe, Mick and Rick make it their sole mission in life to torture us. As sister abuse goes, they're pretty much at the top of the heap. The name calling is superior: Four Eyes, Moose, Stick Legs, Zit Face, Mommy Dearest. It's all spot on. 

They master tried and true methods - pinning us down to spit in our mouths, slipping asparagus into our milk glasses, yanking their dirty underwear over our heads - just the regular stuff.

Mick, the terrible brother

Mick, however, has fine tuned sister torture with sheer creative genius. One day he drags ten-year-old Debbie to the house of a complete stranger and ties her to the railing of the front porch with a jump rope. Then he rings the doorbell and runs.

During one of our endless hide and go seek games in the house, he realizes that Mary has ingeniously hidden herself in the clothes dryer. Gleefully, he turns it on and sends her on a quick rotation or two.

He bounces six year old Terri on Mom and Dad's big bed so high, she flies across the room and sustains a wound to the head which requires seven stitches. Mick is warned within an inch of his life to stop using our parents' bed as a trampoline. Nevertheless, he ignores the warning and shortly afterward bounces Debbie through a window.

"Does it never occur to you that you might kill one of your sisters?" Dad shouts in exasperation.

"Hold it, Dad. Hold it," Mick pleads patiently over and over as if a perfectly logical explanation is forthcoming. "You gotta admit the screen broke her fall."

Our parents don't know what to do with a 14-year-old son who thrives on practical jokes and dangerous stunts. Only recently, rather than weed Mom's enormous garden by hand, he wonders if the best way to destroy weeds might not be just to set them on fire. Thoughtfully, he douses every weed with gasoline and strikes a match. Instantaneously, the entire garden explodes in flames and almost takes Mick with it. Dad is so livid he grounds him for a month.

Both our parents are exhausted, which explains their deaf ears to our own complaints. My sisters and I have had it with our terrible brother. We are at the end of our rope. One day all five of us descend on Mom to scream and wail in communal despair.

"That's enough," Mom throws up her hands. Mick has destroyed her beloved garden, after all. She has problems of her own.

"There are five of you," she sighs wearily. "Surely you can figure out how to handle one 14-year-old boy." Then she turns back to the stove and ignores us. We point neither to her own failure to analyze Mick's psyche nor to the smoldering garden outside the back door.

"Fine!" I hiss. "We'll figure it out ourselves."

Mom has great faith that we will put our collective heads together to choose wisely. She urges us to employ the virtues of compromise, intelligence, forgiveness and even prayer to solve the problem of Mick. Maybe, she suggests later when cooler heads prevail, Mick doesn't feel that we appreciate him and needs more affirmation. We carefully consider that.

But in the end we decide to beat the hell out of him.

For a good week we devise our plan. Mick must be caught off guard, and it's critical that we time our assault precisely. Mom and Dad and Joe and Rick, all of whom will defend Mick, cannot be within hearing distance. We stockpile our weapons and wait for the perfect moment. One afternoon a few weeks later, Mom departs with our baby brothers Tommy and Jeff to pick up Dad from work. Joe and Rick are mowing the lawn. We understand our moment has come.

Mick has just rolled the trash barrels out to the street and will shortly walk through the front door. In tense anticipation, we set the plan in motion. Deb and I hide behind the book case, Carry has squirreled her four-year-old self behind the big living room chair, and Mary and Terri wait in the main hall bathroom. As soon as Mick walks five steps into the door, I shout the marching order.

"GET HIM!"

We scream like banshees and spring from all directions. Mick, for once in his life, is shocked and on the defensive. Because I am the oldest and the biggest, I fling myself on his back, and together we take him to the ground. I immediately sit on him and and pin his arms to the floor. Deb falls quickly over the back of his legs, and Mary, Terri and Carry go in for the kill. Terri and Mary, who wield a hairbrush and a ping pong paddle, land blows on his arms and legs while Carry pounds her tiny fists on his shoulders and occasionally grabs for a fistful of hair.

"Wait!" Deb screams. "His glasses!"

Mary bolts upright, drops her hairbrush, then removes with some difficulty Mick's glasses from his thrashing head. She folds them carefully and gently places them on the coffee table. Then she picks up her hairbrush, shrieks, and resumes beating.

"Get offa me!" Mick bellows. "What'd I do! I didn't do anything!"

None of us can say how long it takes to vent every last bit of our rage and frustration. We do not stop, however, until our anger is spent and Mick is finally subdued. At last, breathing hard, we relent and pull ourselves slowly away. Mick lies for a long time, dazed and humiliated. He hoists himself up, rests his hands on his hips, and stares at the floor.

"How's that feel, huh?" our tiny sister Carry is infused with a second wind. She dances around on her toes like a miniature Muhammad Ali.

It's Mary, though, the sweetest and most saintly of all of us, who surprises us. Eyes sparking, she wags her finger at Mick. "Don't you ever," she growls with vehemence, "EVER mess with us again!"

Then she reaches behind her. "And don't forget your glasses."

Mick accepts the proffered glasses without speaking. He does not move, however, and to our horror, we see silent tears stream down his cheeks. We stare at each other, shocked to the core. We have never seen Mick cry. At last, he turns away and goes off to his room.

Any satisfaction we enjoy suddenly vanishes. Without saying a word, we put the room to rights. We don't speak of what has happened.

Later that evening, Mom is puzzled. "What's the matter with all of you?" Even Mick, to her surprise, is subdued. We don't say anything and Mick doesn't say anything. But my sisters and I wonder if we've done a terrible wrong. Maybe Mom was right all along. Maybe Mick needs us more than we realize.

A few nights later, I'm doing homework in my room when Mick knocks politely and comes through the door. He's carrying a package of fig newtons, my favorite.

"Hey," he smiles shyly. "I know you like these. Want one?"

Joe, Rick and Mick - Joe's 60th birthday, Oct. 11th, 2016.

He holds out the cookies, and I am touched and immensely relieved.

"Thanks, Mick."

He nods. "Sorry about everything," he says.

"It's okay," I shake my head and bite into the cookie only to experience what feels like electric shock. I stare down at the fig newton. Mick has buried a quarter in the center of it. Laughing defiantly, he slams the door behind him.

I shake my head. No need to agonize that we've broken Mick's spirit.

The Terrible Brother is alive and well. And he's here to stay.

Tommy

Grandma Brown says Tommy is a "sickly child."

I don't mean to eavesdrop, but I hear the imperious voice of my grandmother on the other end of the phone. She might be in Pittsburgh, but she sounds as if she's in the next room.

"He's doing much better, Mother Brown." Mom always refers to Grandma as "Mother Brown". She closes her eyes and rubs her forehead. "We've switched him to soy milk."

Thomas Joseph Brown, our ninth sibling, is born on Valentines Day, 1969. From practically his first day on Earth, he has trouble keeping milk down. Because Mom is worried, the rest of us are, too. Tommy is already thin and fragile when the pediatrician finally advises our frazzled mother to switch to soy milk. Mom feeds Tommy in tiny helpings then places him gently over her shoulder to murmur comforts.

At last, our sweet baby brother begins to thrive. He smiles continuously, and his cheeks become fat and rosy.

"Mr. Mashed Potato Cheeks!" I tease him, and my mother laughs.

We are especially protective of Tommy. Deb and Mary, just little girls themselves, cart him around on their hips. My brothers act like clowns and constantly perform.

"Tom! Watch this!" They make faces, pretend to fall on their faces, and generally make buffoons of themselves - anything to hear Tommy's contagious little chuckle. He is never cranky, never demanding. Our little brother appears to exist solely to be loved and adored by the rest of us.

It's when our last sibling Jeffrey Joseph is born that Tommy discovers his life's purpose. Just two years old, he at once regards himself as Jeff's personal caretaker. Sitting close to Mom as she feeds Jeff , Tommy gently strokes Jeff's soft baby head.

"I'm right here, Jeffey," Tommy sings to Jeff in his toddler voice as if to reassure our infant brother.

Grandma Penney, Mom's mom, can hardly keep her eyes off Tommy. She makes the long drive from Beatrice to visit us and cannot drag herself away from our little brother.

"He's so much like Al," she tells Mom, wiping tears from her eyes. Al is our deceased grandfather. "Sometimes I think he's Al come back to me," Grandma confides to Mom.

Tommy is a gift, Grandma reminds us again and again. For some reason, Mom feels anxious whenever Grandma says this. She holds Tommy a little closer as if he might be snatched away and taken from all of us.

One spring day when Tommy is three, he nearly is snatched away. A 15-year-old girl learning to drive catastrophically runs over our little brother in our very own front yard.

It happens on a late spring afternoon when our cousins, the Ryans, are visiting from Denver. MaryLee is actually Dad's cousin, and she, her husband Joe, and their five kids are some of our very favorite people. On Sunday afternoon Mom, Dad, Joe and MaryLee go off to play tennis. As the oldest, I am left in charge. Instead of supervising the kids in the front yard, however, I sprawl on the couch to watch tv.

In the yard, Deb playfully throws Tommy's Micky Mouse across the street, and Tommy is outraged. When no one is paying attention, he toddles across the road to retrieve Micky Mouse. He's just stepped foot into our yard again when the 15-year-old driver, accompanied by four older women all talking at once, panics and swerves into Tommy.

My brother Rick and I rush outside to see a car resting in the middle of our front yard. I hear my baby brother screaming beneath the vehicle. The teenage driver grips the wheel and refuses to move. A woman gets out of the car but stands dazed and confused. Twelve-year-old Rick crouches under the car and begins to crawl toward Tommy who lies on his side pinned to the ground by the tail pipe.

Rick can only edge his way so far. "Tommy!" he shouts over our little brother's screams. "Roll over on your stomach and crawl to me!"

Somehow Tommy is able to follow Rick's simple directions and pulls himself with his arms to Rick. He is bleeding profusely from his side and head, and both legs are contorted in strange angles.

"I want a jelly sandwich!!" Tommy screams. He's in shock. My brothers bend over to comfort him, and Joe yells over his shoulder. "Cathy, call an ambulance!"

It takes several attempts to force my shaking hands to work the telephone dial, but at last help is on the way.

Miles away at the tennis court, Mom hears the ambulance siren and immediately feels a terrible sense of foreboding. "I hope the kids are okay," she turns to Dad.

"Patti," Dad says reasonably, "this is a town of 32,000 people. What are the odds?"

At home, the paramedics have carefully lifted Tommy into the ambulance, and I am allowed to ride with him. A policeman has just arrived, and my brothers give him directions to the tennis courts and our parents.

Tommy is suddenly quiet and unresponsive in the ambulance.

"Tommy?" I hold his hand and lean close to his face. He stares at me but doesn't answer, and I begin to weep.

"He's okay," the paramedic pats my shoulder.

At the hospital, Mom and Dad and the Ryans have arrived ahead of us. They do not know which of their children has been injured, and I see my mother and MaryLee running toward the ambulance. As soon as the paramedic opens the door, Mom is there. She sees Tommy and covers her face with her hands.

"He's all right, Mom!" I say. She nods her head and follows Tommy and the paramedics as they sprint into the hospital. MaryLee follows close behind. Standing by the door of the ambulance and waiting for me is my big, safe father. I need him very much.

"Dad," I fall out of the ambulance and sob. "It was my fault. I wasn't watching."

Dad preaches "responsibility" to all of us day in day out. I understand he will be very, very angry. But he's not.

"Babe! Babe!" he grips my shoulders. We march into the hospital, and I lean against him and sob all the way. I am certain Tommy will die and that I will never see him again.

But he doesn't die.

Tommy remains at Lutheran Hospital for a long time. Doctors close the wound on his side with 18 stitches and cast his right leg. His left leg is broken so badly that it requires traction for three weeks. Mom is adamant that he will never be left alone in the hospital. She's there every morning when he wakes up and stays with him at night until he falls asleep. The rest of us older kids take shifts during the day.

The nurses on Tommy's floor fall in love with him. Two of them check on him often.

"You are such a cutie!" one young nurse kisses his mashed potato cheeks.

Tommy flirts with her. "YOU'RE a cutie!" he chuckles.

By the end of those three weeks, Tommy's second leg is in a cast, too, and we carry him home in a blanket. Mom and Dad gently place him in a reclining position in the back seat, and for the first time in his life, Tommy doesn't have to sit in the crack of the station wagon.

It's a long summer of recovery for our little brother. We carry him in and out of the house on his blanket. On warm summer days, he reclines outside while Mom gardens and the little kids play. Inside, he claims the tv room couch. When some of us sit beside him, we carefully raise his legs and place them on top of our laps. He occasionally lifts his plastered cast legs and lets them drop with a crack on our knees.

"Dang it, Tommy!" Rick howls in pain. Tommy chuckles in delight.

We help him go to the bathroom in a jug. We bring all his food to him and carry him to bed at night.

"Take me to the backyard!" he commands. "Bring the jug!"

He orders us around like servants, and we perform every single task. How can we not? Every day we witness his struggle to sit up or roll over with two burdensome casts on his legs. Other than the delight he takes in bossing us around, he rarely whines or cries with the frustration of it all. He is, in fact, remarkably cheerful and sunny. We cannot help but think that he might not be with us at all.

Everyone of us is filled with guilt. Deb cannot forgive herself for tossing his Mickey Mouse across the street. She blames herself for the accident. But I know differently. I was in charge of Tommy that day. I am his big sister, and I didn't take care of him. I vow never again in my life to fail him.

It's a great day for all of us when Tommy is broken free from his casts. With physical therapy, he soon is walking and running again. He seems to suffer no trauma or ill effects from the accident. He does, however, continue to be our baby brother Jeff's caretaker.

In fact, for all the rest of his life, Tommy is a caretaker. He loves to distraction his beautiful wife and kids. He and Sheryl take in foster children and love them like their own. Tommy becomes director of the Primrose Retirement Home in Grand Island. His residents adore him, and he adores them.

Tom and his family, 2011

He's even able to joke about the accident. Not long ago, Deb asks to borrow a cooler.

"Forget it," Tom cracks with a straight face. "You tried to kill me when I was three. Find your own damn cooler."

Then he laughs that same little contagious chuckle.

Tom is 47-years-old. He's tall, handsome and highly respected in the community. Many, many people depend on him.

But he's still my baby brother. I still love his mashed potato cheeks. And I cannot in a million years fathom life without him.