The military national guard, my blue star brother, and me

  This is my own story about a very special person who happens to be my twin brother.  He is in the Army military national guard.  I am writing this, I guess, as sort of a way to deal with my worries and fears about his upcoming deployment.  Before I go into that, a little background on us.

  My brother and I came up in typical suburban America.  Our family wasn't rich, but our parents made more than enough to provide for the three of us ( our older sister April, myself, and our beloved brother Ken).  Our birth father died when we were very young, and our family became your typical stepfather abuse story, with a more sinister twist in regards to our sister. 

  The three of us survived, however, and we have grown into (in my opinion) fine and upstanding adults.  My brother, especially.  He was always the louder of the three, and wears his huge heart on the outside for the world to see.  He joined the navy and traveled the world after high school and got his honorable discharge, and began a civilian career fixing airplanes in our hometown of Houston, Texas, where all of us live today. 

  After 9/11 happened, he joined up with the military national guard field artillary unit from Beaumont, Tx.  He wanted badly to go to Iraq, but for some administrative reasons, he didn't get to make that deployment.  He, instead, volunteered to work on the Texas/Mexico border and did that mission with the border patrol people for about a year and a half.  Hurricane Katrina hit, and he was stationed at the Astrodome to help with the New Orleans evacuees, then right after that, Hurricane Rita hit the coast, and his guard unit was deployed all along the Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas coast cleaning up the debris and helping out.

  He finally  got his chance to go to Iraq, and he didn't want to upset my mother , so he told her he was ordered to go, when in fact he had volunteered (around the time of the troop surge).  It was a painfully fearful time.  None of us knew what to expect.  We were all sad, proud, afraid.  Just a mix of emotions all at once.  He came home just fine, and went back to work at the airport and did his weekend duties.

  Now he's got his orders to leave in December, and for some reason, this time, I cannot contain my fear.  This is the part where I get emotional.  He wants so bad to go over there.  He's very patriotic that way.  He works so hard at his civilian job.  He gives so much.  He just gives and gives and keeps on giving back to his communities and his country.  A true American.  The electric company didn't care about any of that when they cut his lights off because he was a little behind.  He just got laid off a couple days ago, and he's been really bummed.

  It just hurts to see Americans treat the givers of our freedom that way.  It makes me want to explode.  But enough about that.  So he's still in the military national guard, and he's set to go, and for some reason, this time around, for me anyway, it's much scarier and  more difficult to deal with.  Call it a "twin" thing, but this time scares me.  They have all sorts of places to go and people to call and talk to, but for some reason, none of it can settle me.  I love him, and even though I'm not a hugely religious person, I pray he comes back to us, and finally gets to relax a little bit.