My final Thanksgiving family blog is about Sydney, the baby of the family, youngest of five! From the time Sydney came home from the hospital, I wondered if she would ever learn to walk on her, since she was rarely put down by any of her siblings. Their ages when she was born were: 15,13,11, and 9.5! When Sydney was born it was a family affair, all 4 of her siblings, and my parents were in the delivery room, and took part in taking her footprints, watching as she was weighed and measured, and bonding with her from the minute she opened her eyes!
Older brother Kyle, in particular, was enamored with her from birth, and to this day, still watches over her closely. With Sydney, I was never able to just tell her to do something, and expect that it would be done, everything had to have an explanation. She was very strong willed, and we had many an argument over things like, why she had to be in her car seat, why she had to take a bath, why she couldn’t live on top of the refrigerator:)
When she was two I had her riding in lead line at horse shows, but convincing her to wear all the proper equipment and clothing was not easy, actually getting her to wear any clothing was not easy:) She used to love to embarrass her older brother’s friends by running around without any clothes on. I still remember the time, she got dressed up in a wedding gown at age five, and married Kyle’s friend Brandon, on the trampoline!
She was in love with Barney, and Blues Clues, and could watch those shows for hours. Her cousin Alex, and her used to love playing together, and are both now at UF together. Summers spent at New Smyrna Beach with all of her cousins brings back a lot of memories too. My family has been going there every summer since I was seven.
Sydney was not an easy child to babysit when she was little. I remember her dragging one babysitter into the bath tub with her, because she didn’t want to wash her hair. I remember the time another one was watching her, and she managed to crash a golf cart into her car. While her strong mindedness, and questioning everything, made her early childhood difficult, it turned her into an incredible student in school, and helped her graduate high school with a weighted GPA of 4.7, with very difficult classes.
She and I loved the month we used to spend every summer in Key Colony…..Except for the time I took her with the older kids to see the movie, “Signs.” She says she is still scarred to this day. She kept glasses of water everywhere for quite a long time. After we got back, I would occasionally make circles in the fields, with the manure spreader, just to see if I could make her mad:) There was another time in the Keys when we were with a friend, and we lost site of him while he was diving for Lobster. I got concerned and ended up calling the Coast Guard, Sydney was concerned because she was hungry:) She wanted me to leave him in the water, and take her back to get food! She said, “He’ll be ok”. And thankfully, he popped up, just as the Coast Guard arrived:) At the end of our month in the Keys every summer, one or both of us was usually in tears because we did not want to leave.
We also shared an incredible trip to Europe together with the Gainesville Youth Chorus one summer. We went on the Sound of Music Tour, and visited: Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, Garmisch, Passau, Oberammergen, and the Bavarian Alps! They sang in many of the old Cathedrals, and it was so beautiful listening to them sing. Sydney was also a very picky eater, and she survived that tour by eating many packs of Ramen noodles I had packed in a suitcase, along with a hot water boiler:) I had learned on a previous trip to Poland, where she dropped five pounds before we got home, because she would not eat the food they served.
My scariest moment to date in my life, was on a day where I had just gotten back from hauling a horse to Orlando, and was at Kyle’s apartment with a dead phone. His phone rang, and it was a parent from her school trying to reach me to tell me that Sydney had been hit by a car while running cross country. All they knew was that she had run across the street, in front of a car, had been thrown over the top of it, and had been bleeding and unconscious. Kyle and I grabbed our things, and just flew to Shands. We called Katie who was working to have her try to meet the ambulance. We were in such a hurry, we pulled into the VA Emergency room first by mistake, and then managed to find the right one. As we ran up to the floor they were moving her to, we found her being wheeled off the elevator. She was crying and apologizing for not looking before she crossed the street! I assured her, that it was going to be alright. She was covered in blood and dirt from the road, but in the end, she managed to come out of it with a concussion, lots of road rash, some bruised up arms and legs, and two stitches! She spent two nights in the hospital, and was back at school a couple days later. I have a picture still, of the damage her body did to the car, and will always know, that there were Angels with her that day for sure! That night, Megan slept with her at the hospital, so I could go home and take care of the horses. I remember driving around on the tractor, crying, thinking how empty my life would have been if there had been a different outcome. I would find myself repeating that driving the tractor around and crying two years later, when she left for college, and for the first time in 34 years, I was living totally by myself.
Sydney now is in her second year of college, and loving every minute of it. She has joined a sorority, and keeps very busy with her classes. She is pre-med at this time, and doing very well. She also does a lot of volunteer work, which makes me happy:) She volunteers at Shands, and in a Reading program for kids, along with all the volunteer activities her sorority does, Their biggest fund raising effort every year is the Dance Marathon, for Children’s Miracle Network. Her sorority raised over a hundred thousand dollars last year!
I am very proud of the caring and loving young woman she has become, and can’t wait to see what the future holds for her.