My Family

 

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

 

As I have gotten older, I have realized just how important my family is to me. Like every child growing up, by the time I was a senior in high school, my parents and siblings were on myvery last nerve. Now that I am older and a little more wiser, my stance on my family has changed. My parents are my rock and my brothers are slowly becoming some of my best friends.

My Mother, Teresa, grew up all over Texas while her father opened up a chain of shoes stores called Simpson's Shoes. After graduating from Texas City High School in 1978, my mother enrolled at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches Texas in pursuit of a Fashion Merchandising degree. My father, Peter, on the other hand, grew up in the same house in Clayton, a suburb of Saint Louis, until he started college at Saint Louis University where he studied International Journalism and French.

In 1986 my mother's father suffered a heartattack which quickly prompted her to move to Saint Louis to be closer to her family, who had moved from Texas in the early 80's. At the time, my father was working in Human Resource at Dillards in Chesterfield when my mom was hired as a buyer for the Midwest region of Womenswear and Men's Sleepwear. If it wasn't for my Grandfather's heartattack, my parents would have never met and gotten married. After going out on one date, my father came back the next morning to my mother's apartment in Soulard and proposed to her on the spot; they have been happily married for 24 years.

On June 8, 1989 I was born. I was three months premature and weighed 1 pound 11 ounces, which afforded me many health problems initially. By late September I was able to go home a health(ier) baby. In 1992 my family moved from Richmond Heights, a suburb of Saint Louis, to Litchfield Illinois for two reasons. The first being that my parents wanted to raise us in a small town where a lot of my mother's family were already present, as well as starting a business venture by opening up a consignment shop called Clothes-Go-Round.

My brothers, Mitchell and Adam, were born on July 12, 1993 promptly followed by Eric who was born in September of 1994. I took the big brother role seriously until about my Sophomore year of High School. Looking back at my childhood, I now realize how much fun I had growing up in Litchfield where we could ride our bikes anywhere and not have to worry about things that we might have in the city. As Mitchell and Adam prepare for their first semester of college in the fall (Mitchell going to University of Missouri in Columbia and Adam going to SIUE) I'm excited to see how we'll grow as a family now that our childhood is coming to a close.