If Natalie Never Got Cut

Life. It winds and turns in odd sorts of ways like a never-ending riddle. Each random decision of action coupled with an ever more random reaction.

If such and such happens, then such and such else will happen.

If, it is such a powerfully moving yet meaninglessly speculative word. I remember the first time I ever read the poem If by Rudyard Kipling. I got chills. I was sitting in Natalie's bedroom on her broken trundle bed that she shared with Mel and Meg. She was out, probably at the mall buying clothes from Express. So I took the time to peruse her mysterious trunk of teenage treasures.

Nat was goofy and silly, and sometimes unbareably aloof, but beyond that, she was remarkably deep. I discovered that depth hidden in her off limits trunk of treasures where Mr. Kipling sat beside Charles Swindol and his famous words on Attitude. If only I could be that cool.

I daydreamed about growing up and being just like Nat - playing sports, having friends, dating cute boys, and owning such wise words. Maybe, even one day me and Nat would be best friends. She'd teach me everything she knew about field hockey, we'd talk about poems and eat Pizza, and make plans to piss off Sarah.

But until that day, I had to resign myself to being her overly obsessed little sister. I wrote her sappy notes of kiddish inspiration and idolization.

I was her biggest fan, and I made sure she knew it.

Dear Natalie,

Today you face Shawnee in the State Tournament. I know the game will be very hard because they are very good. But you are very good too. You work very hard like when you go in the back yard on the basketball court with cones and you dribble and run over and over until you can't breath. I know because I watch from the back door because Mom won't let me go outside with you. One time you were out there and it was snowing. That was amazing. I wanted to come outside and make snow angels, and ask the angels if one day I will be like you. Because you are my hero. Good luck in your game. I will love you win or lose, but it will be easier for me to love you if you win. So do your besets.

Love, Your strange 8 year old sister Rachel  

Creepy, I know, but Nat didn't mind. It kept her laughing, and as long as Nat was smiling so was I.

Sometimes I get sad that we had to grow up. I wish we could go back for a day to when it was just the ten of us stuffed like sardines in that little square green house on Hamilton Ave.

But we can't go back. Nope, we just keep getting older. Tomorrow, Nat will enter the year of the double triple. Yup, that's real old. As if getting old isn't enough, she is seven months up river with child number four. She hasn't decided on a name yet, but I told her she ought to call the new baby, Finally. Because finally a bit of baby girl pink will join Nat's blue troupe of boy-clones - William, Ellis, and Bailey.

Finally fits, not just because of the pink, but because baby Finally gave her Mama her infamous big booty back. Nat always had some "junk in the trunk" at least she always did until she lost it in her post-sporting, baby-birthing days.

Growing up, David would conduct us in the singing of a little ditty about Nat - "Nat the Rat who Sat on the Hat and flattened the Cat," with the un-censored lyric of: "Because her ass is so fat."

Okay, I fibbed - that really isn't a lyric, but, the song insinuated such a thing.  It never fussed Nat. She'd saunter unamused, yet not terribly offended, upstairs yelling:

"Yea, yea, real funny. Why don't you grow up and get some friends Dave."

Dave wouldn't hear her, because he would be too busy high-fiving the rest of us on a job well-done.

"Yea Rach. We got her that time."

And usually we would respond: "Dave, can we do 'Are you Ready' now?"

"No, Meg, it is not game day. Only on game day's can we do 'Arrrrrrrrrrrre you READY?'"

"Yes, Sir!!!"

Natalie dreamed of being a cheerleader like Aunt Cindy, my Dad's youngest blond hair blue eyed sister who pom-pomed her way into the Philadelphia Eagles dance squad. We thought she was famous and that she walked on water. At least she was the closest thing to fame we ever knew. So naturally Nat wanted to follow in her dance steps.

But, fortunately (for me at least) Nat's dream didn't come true. Her butt must have had too much bounce because she was cut from the Berlin Community School cheerleading squad in the first round of tryouts in the 5th grade. The harsh fate of the rhythmically pathetic forced her to pick up that damn field hockey stick that had been laying around the house since the neighbors left it when they moved to Florida.

Turned out to be the best (or maybe worst) thing that ever happened to the Dawson girls. Because if the cheerleading thing had worked out for Natalie, most likely none of us would have went to college.

So let's take a moment and give three cheers to Nat’s big butt and her ounce-off rah-rah-shish-boom-bahhing short-coming. Without you, Nat never would have traded her spirit stick for a field hockey stick.

Hip, hooray. Hip, hooray. Hip, HOORAY.

Okay, enough celebrations. 

I have a confession:

It is with my sincerest regards to the Admissions Board at the University of Iowa that I let this truth come to light. At the ripe age of twelve while I lived in the tom-boyish hey day of the “Ralph Years,” I made an important decision to safeguard my future in college athletics - I (co) wrote my sister Natalie’s college application essay to the University of Iowa.

I don’t know exactly how it came to be - if she asked me to help or if I took it upon my ambitious Natalie-adoring self to “clean-up” her apathetic, half-written words - but somehow, I found myself hunched over the obese word processor in the play room stressing over what to write. Another poem came to mind, The Road Less Traveled.   

I wrote with the purest intentions, for my sake, her sake, and the sake of all those that fell in the Dawson line-up below her.

Nat was pretty and charismatic and she was great at doing cool older sister things like talking on the phone, curling her hair, playing sports, watching 90210, putting on make-up, singing songs, babysitting, helping mom with dinner. And she had lots of really cool friends, too, like Lindsay Fullylove, Diana Gatinelli, and Maria Previty who lived in big houses in cool developments like the Woods and Centennial.  

And besides her cool friends in cool houses, boys loved Nat too - Neal Sherman, Joe Lavocca, Anthoney Pappa, Brian Collins, Norm Simon, Charles Robinson, even Paul Thum in her 8^th grade school production of Wagon Wheels West.

What was best of all about Nat was that she wasn’t ashamed of her annoying, crazy little sisters. She brought her friends home and let us play with them. She brought college coaches home and let us entertain them. She brought us to cool high school things like basketball games, football games, and talent shows like the one time when her boyfriend Brian Collins got in trouble for quasi-stripping to the song “Put Me In Coach.”

Nat loved us and she defended us. One time in middle school some older girl made fun of Andrew, and Natalie jumped across the cafeteria table and tackled her.  She earned a three-day out of school suspension, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world, because she got to stay home and watch Berlin’s local celebrity Kelly Rippa in the ABC Soap All My Children.

Nat sometimes got angry, and that could be scary because like Meghan, she had anger muscles. Her and Sarah got in some nasty sisterly brawls. One time, they were shoving each other around, and somehow Sarah went thru our bedroom wall. Mom and Dad weren’t home, so we covered the hole with our Brad Pitt Legends of the Falls poster, and never told them.

Nat was my sports hero. She made Varsity Field Hockey her freshman year of high school. I wrote her creepy notes of inspiration before big games. I watched her highlight reels, and skills videos, and hoped that someday I would be as good as her. 

Natalie was like Tina Turner's song, Simply the Best. And to me, her adoring little sister, she deserved to go to college.

But unlike me, writing wasn’t her thing.  

So, at age 12, I decided to do the one thing I could to thank Nat for being such a great big sister. I sat hovered over her unfinished words for days and slowly but surely crafted an irresistible (or so I imagine) college application essay on The Road Less Traveled.

Whether it was her stellar essay, or some other force, Nat got into Iowa and paved the road for all of us.

And that road has made all the difference, not just for her, or me, but for all six of the Dawson girls who took the trek across the northern cornfields to deposit our big sister Nat at the doorstep of her new family, the Iowa Hawkeyes.

And after we dropped her and all her stuff at the front door of her new family, we went to the coolest place ever - Shakey’s Buffet, and after that we drove to the Field of Dreams. 

It's ironic really. Because if Natalie never went to college, none of my dreams would have ever come true.

The road she paved has made all the difference.