I was born on June 25, 1983, in Berlin, Germany. But to explain why I was born in Germany, yet don't speak German, requires a little bit of backtracking.
My parents are John and Emily Brennan. Back in the '60s, they were very much involved in the counter-culture movement... okay, let's face it, they were hippies. They went to Berkeley, went on peace marches, probably smoked some pot or did some LSD, and so on. They had decided to get married after graduation, and they made that dream a reality on July 4, 1969.
Now in a perfect world, Dad would've gone on to graduate school, thus avoiding the draft and the horrors of Vietnam. But, as the case is, it wasn't a perfect world. Dad was drafted just a month after he and Mom got married, and Dad got shipped off to Vietnam for an eleven-month tour of duty.
Luckily for Dad, he had settled on an almost practical major at Berkeley, electrical engineering. What he had originally planned to do with such a degree wasn't entirely clear, but now that he was in the Army, he made an excellent radio technician... and the Army needed people like that. So his time in Vietnam wasn't all that bad... unlike Johnny Depp's character in Platoon, nothing blew up behind his back, or anything else bad like that.
After his eleven months were up, Dad had actually grown kind of fond of being a part of the Army. He didn't care much for life in Vietnam, but he did like the regular paychecks. After all, he was a family man now... his first daughter, Bonnie, was born in April of 1970. So Dad talked to a couple of the officers that he had made friends with, and managed to get a couple of strings pulled. He joined the Army as a regular recruit, and they made sure he would get to stay state-side, or at least not go for another tour in Vietnam.
And thus began the travels of the Brennan family. Here, there, and everywhere, that's what Mom says when she tells us where we've lived. Lizzie was born in Japan in 1972; Eleanor was born in England in 1974; Julia was born in Panama in 1977; Sadie was born in Italy in 1979; and Michelle was born in France in 1981. And then, finally, along came me. Yeah, seven girls. Dad LOVES to complain about that one. But really, I don't think he minds all that much... after all, he got to name us all after Beatles songs. Remember, hippies.
There's actually a funny story about why my parents named me Lucy. It's after "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," of course. But Dad originally planned on naming me Maggie Mae. Well, at least until I was born. See, there's a line in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" about "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes." Apparently, when I was born, something weird in the light made my eyes look like they were cycling between blue and purple in swirling patterns. Except that it couldn't have been the light, because they kept doing that for a couple of weeks. My Aunt Susan, who came to visit us when I was born, says it was like they couldn't decide which color to be. Well, they're purple now. Weird, I know.
After I was born, we traveled around for a few years, but before I turned 5, Dad got assigned to a base in South Carolina, and our journeys through the United States began. I started school in Charleston, South Carolina, and I could name you every other city that I went to school in, but I don't think I could tell you any of my teacher's names, or about much of what I learned. I loved traveling, and seeing all the new places we lived. School was another story. It just never has been my thing.
Now Mom and Dad were concerned about my grades, because, frankly, they stunk. When they took me to the doctor, he said I had ADHD. Yeah, me and at least half of the kids in my class. Even if it is true, you mix that with being an Army brat, and it’s no wonder that I couldn't get good grades. Well, that, and I really didn't care that much about school. Like I said, not my thing. But I struggled through it, and managed to get by.
Before I started high school, Dad decided to retire from the Army, and bought a farm near Troy, Missouri. Troy is basically in the middle of nowhere, though it's not too far from St. Louis. A whole lot of nothing is about what it amounts to.
By this time, it was 1997, and it was just Michelle and I at home. All of my other sisters had grown up and headed off to college, or the real world, or some of both. Bonnie and Lizzie had both gotten married, and I was an aunt before I graduated from high school. Eleanor was in the Peace Corps, Julia was in grad school in Texas, and Sadie was out at Mom and Dad's alma mater. Michelle left for college in '99, studied abroad her second semester, and decided that France was the place for her. Everyone was happy, including me.
During the spring of my senior year, Uncle Mark came to stay with us. He's Dad's youngest brother, and only a couple of years older than Bonnie. Dad always said that I reminded him of Uncle Mark, but I never realized how true it was until that summer.
Uncle Mark always came and went as he pleased, to the point where we never could be sure if he might be eating dinner with us on any given night. As luck would have it, if Mom made enough for four, Uncle Mark would drop in. If the meal only served three, he didn't come around till much later, if at all. Not too long after I graduated, he stopped by the house and asked to talk to all of us. He was going on a trip this summer, he told us. And since this was my last "summer of freedom," in his words, he wanted to know if Mom and Dad would let me tag along. He didn't even have to ask me if I wanted to go or not. Apparently me almost falling out of my chair when he said the word "trip" was all the hint he needed.
Mom and Dad were a little bit skeptical at first. Then the phone rang, Lizzie calling from Boston. My niece and nephew wanted me to tell them a bedtime story like the one I had told them when they came to visit for Easter. I took the phone into the kitchen and did as they requested. As luck would have it, Uncle Mark managed to use that twenty minutes to convince Mom and Dad that taking me with him on his trip would be good for everyone. By the time I said all of my "Good nights" to Lizzie's family, Mom was already looking over the camping backpacks, trying to find the best one for me to use.
When I look back at that summer now, the whole thing seems like it was a little bit surreal. That might just be hindsight... probably so. It started with the dreams. During the day, we would walk so far that when I went to sleep, I dreamt of walking. But then the dreams got even stranger. I dreamt of walking in places that I knew I had never seen before, yet I knew exactly where I was, and where to go. Then I started having these dreams during the day as well. One day, I stopped to tell Uncle Mark that I thought the heat was getting to me, because that sure looked like a real oasis off to our left, despite the fact that we were in Kansas. And then everything exploded.
The sky turned as purple as my eyes had ever been, and the clouds swirled as though they were in a kaleidoscope. The tree I had stopped to lean against became slippery and sticky at the same time. I heard waterfalls crashing down on rocks, and radiant music coming from everywhere. The air smelled as though someone had cooked all of my favorite meals, and it was so thick I could nearly taste some of the foods. There were cellophane flowers of yellow and green... three blind hummingbirds hanging in the air like jewels of iridescent scarlet and cobalt... waves of joy drifting through my opened mind... a woman standing with doves on her shoulders, the doves are scorpions, the woman is a small pool of ice-cream, melting on a sidewalk on a hot summer’s day...
I don't know how long this lasted, and even now, I know that what I'm describing isn't quite right. Half of it is snippets of song, and things I remember from books. I don't think there are words that can describe it all properly, and even if there were, I don't know that I would want to. At any rate, after a while, things got a little bit closer to... well, let's just say things got less weird.
Uncle Mark was standing in front of me, though how I knew it was him, I'm not quite sure. He was a little bit taller, with darker skin, and clothes that I hadn't seen before. Then he showed me my reflection in the oasis I had seen earlier, and I realized that I had changed too, much in the same way. Before I got a chance to ask, he began to explain things to me... about what had happened, and what I was now, and what was to be done.
I took my time learning the new ways, and seeing even more of the Kingdoms. I learned a lot from Uncle Mark and from the other fae that we met along the way. I've heard some wonderful stories now, and I can't wait until I go see Lizzie and Bonnie's kids again. They'll love the one I heard the other night, about the kindly dragon.
I guess the only weird thing is that my stories aren't made up anymore...
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