For My Brother’s 50th Birthday
It has been said that the arrival of a 50th birthday is a milestone, a date marked by many cultures as a moment worthy of honor. Much could be said in favor of this assessment. This is especially true in the case of my only and older brother, Eric Scott Anderson, born on January 7th, 1971 to Ricardo and Sue Anderson of Aurora, IL.
To honor this 50th milestone is appropriate for several reasons. The first recognition that this honor is merited is based on my own memories of Eric’s teenage years. I still find myself strangely seeing Eric as a teen in the 80s. Based on the sworn silence of my private knowledge of a portion of Eric’s antics as a teen, it is a miracle of God that he reached the age of 20 without loss of life, limb, or a prison sentence. It was in these years that Eric, who was not a fan of high school, one might say he was not a fan of authority, dropped out of high school and briefly moved out of the house with a few bucks to his name. It was the most tumultuous and sad memory I have of his youth. This is not to say that Eric was a bad person, only that he was a typical American teenage male, full of humor, curiosity, and testosterone that generated a small dose of normal rebellion.
I did not appreciate the challenge that all teenagers universally present to parents until I had these little monsters as my own. Child development experts recognize that the teenage years are a period of curious exploration of what it means to be an adult. Such exploration should be expected and can be healthy. As such, teens frequently explore boundaries. Perhaps it would be better to say that teens frequently transgress boundaries, that is, they blatantly cross them. These transgressions or explorations create significant stress for parents who simply want their children to become better versions of themselves.
There is a reason we name and recall our adolescent behavior with the Biblical nomenclature the “sins of our youth.” Few of us are foolish enough to speak of the “virtue of our youth” because true, heart-derived righteousness was almost nonexistent in us. Any virtue we exhibited was either modeled by healthy adults and blindly parroted by us or coerced with incentives or threat of punishment. Brain science tells us that the prefrontal cortex of the human brain enables us to calculate the long term consequences of decisions. Unfortunately this vital resource is not fully formed until we reach our 20s. One might argue that this is either a design flaw or a case to be made for locking young people in padded cages until the full formation of the prefrontal cortex.
All young people make frequent decisions that adults in private conversations bemoan as stupid, idiodic, and moronic. Adults privately and humorously recall their own youthful transgressions to each other outside the company of their own children. This is a little known secret unknown to young people. Of course no adult confesses such personal fault in front of their own teens. We must maintain the righteous upper hand, or so we naively convince ourselves. Perhaps more humble lessons of past failure would be a formative parenting tool. I have often reflected on my own foolish youthful behavior and it has continually surfaced as a barometer to guide my own children.
Creatures with free will are the devil. Just ask the Creator God of the book of Genesis. Raising young people with free will is a nightmare for parents with unformed expectations.
Wisdom has taught me that teenagers need room for exploration. Yes, Mom, this means even allowing your oldest son to listen to Ozzy Osbourne every now and then lest he choose an even darker artist. I know, “How does it get darker than biting off the head of a bat?” Let it be known that there is no better way to ensure that your teen will become a lover of heavy metal than by conforming to the traveling evangelist’s command to collect all of the rock music in your house for a holy bonfire. Surely the explosion of the metal industry owes something to the fiery preaching of fundamentalists.
In my now 44 year old mind, I still think of my brother as that very cool, slightly rebellious kid who just wanted to have fun outside the lines of our fundamentalist church tradition and the laws of Illinois. I reminisce on these years and still pull lessons for my own parenting and preaching from the interaction between Eric, Rick, and Sue Anderson in the mid to late 1980s. He lived to be 20. We could have celebrated then. We probably would need to celebrate that Rick and Sue also survived the 80s.
They say that even a blind squirrel finds a nut. One of the best decisions of Eric’s youth, call it the grace of God or the random firing of the right sequence of electrical impulses in his brain, was to find and convince Bonnie Flowers to marry him. Yes, Bonnie, I did just refer to you as a nut. Either Eric matured quickly or Bonnie helped center him. Perhaps her presence simply caused that unformed prefrontal cortex to suddenly grow. I witnessed Eric quickly become a man. He finished high school via his GED. He got a job, I think managing an oil change shop. He was really good at leading his team. I know because I worked for him over two summers learning from the guy who was the smartest car guy I have known. His word on cars is still the Bible to me. Of course such knowledge of cars was made available to him by turning the driveway of 25 Scarsdale Road into a junkyard of random cars. It really was a sight to behold: four or five cars lined up on top of each other. Most of them were only useful enough for me to use jump off of to dunk a basketball.
Eric’s transformation into manhood was marvelous to watch. This slightly rebellious teen became a man, a husband, a manager, a homeowner, and even a parent to two incredible human beings, Scotty and Melanie. Eric and Bonnie have maintained a healthy marriage for years, even though I am certain, like every other human couple, they have had to overcome challenges in marriage and in parenting.
This one person, Eric Anderson, is becoming a tribe as his own children find partners and add to the tribe. Perhaps more shockingly, Eric has had a successful career in law enforcement. This is proof that the universe has a sense of humor. As they are entering a new phase of life as empty nesters, Eric and Bonnie have upgraded to a new home and an RV they use to vacation in the Western Carolinas. This seemingly once misguided teenage young man has become a normal, healthy, and even model citizen. The whole affair is amazing to ponder. Other nervous parents might reflect on the trajectory of Eric’s life and just chill a bit and remember that proverbial advice, “Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it.” Life is a journey. By God’s grace and providence we take root and become the kind of people we ought to be.
My only regret is not having closer proximity to my older brother. I developed and honed my own sense of humor from Eric introducing me to the prank call heroes known as the Jerky Boys. Maybe late in life Eric and I can develop our own little enterprise of helping people prank each other. One of the curses of modern travel and transportation is the ability to live anywhere we want or where opportunity calls. For me, Pennsylvania is too far from North Carolina, too far for brothers to live apart. My own six children see their Uncle Eric the same way I do: a funny, cool, good human being you want to be around.
As a minister, I have often witnessed the families and friends of the dead honor, gush, and even weepingly recall the goodness of their now deceased loved ones. Why do we wait to honor those we love until they are not alive to hear it?
So, on this January 7th, 2021, the 50th celebration of the life of my brother, Eric Scott Anderson, I want to honor my living brother by telling the world how proud I am of the man he has become. Eric’s life is a testimony to exploration, growth, hard work, endurance, decency, respect, goodness, public service, and most of all love. Most importantly, I pray Eric is deeply moved by the limitless grace of the Father who sent Jesus to pursue us with love. Surely goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives!
Our world needs more good men in this dark and divided age. Eric is one of the good guys. On this golden jubilee, I raise my pint of beer in Pennsylvania toward North Carolina to say,
“Happy 50th Eric. I love you big brother more than I get the opportunity to express. I hope we hangout and laugh together soon.”
