| Current mood: |  calm |
The 5th Day of Christmas
I had a lovely parents-free day with my brother and as our parents decided to pay a visit to the lovely spas of Budapest and spend the night in that lovely hotel we visited last year, my boys and I are looking forward to a lovely night as well.
Darn, I can hear Marni Nixon sing 'Wouldn't It Be Loverly '. Yes, she was the singing voice of Audrey Hepburn. (OK, so I had to ask Derek about that.)
So yes, the parents left early for Budapest, leaving Travis home with me. No, Travis has not seen Budapest yet. Tomorrow I'll take him, I think. Anyway, today I took him to Vienna. He really enjoyed the sights, we had lunch at the Hotel Sacher, went to see Schönbrunn, saw the Stefansdom, had ice cream near the Cathedral, and enjoyed the music of street performers.
Travis had a blast. He rarely gets to do things like this today. Now you need to know that Travis was injured at birth--two of his vertebrae broke to pieces and his spine was injured. Now, at 22, he walks with two crutches and our parents are very protective of him. Oveprotective. And while Travis is a major overachiever, he would never dare to go and discover a city alone.
Travis and I talked a lot. He received a call to serve a mission, and he was supposed to go to the MTC in early January, but then again his doctor just notified the MTC that he would need another surgery before he should go. He is a little disappointed, but at the same time I think he is relieved. It seems to me he is wanting to serve that mission for all the wrong reasons. He wants to serve to please our parents. He wants to serve, because he has doubts about the Church. He wants to serve because that is what the girls at BYU expect. He wants to serve because his girlfriend told him she wanted to marry a returned missionary.
She wants to serve more or less for the same reasons I went on my mission. I told him that if these are his reasons he can be happy in the Church, raise a real family in the gospel, but these are not enough for a full time mission. He will suffer, even more than I suffered as I served in a lax and fun mission, where, if nothing else, the members made the long days worth. Not to mention all the "gentile" music we could listen to! Oh, man, my lovely musical collection!
My point is... I have been trying to tell Travis that if he doesn't have a testimony he simply shouldn't go on a mission now. What the bishops tell young men about surely getting a testimony in the field is just a pile natural ferilizer. No on really expects him to serve--not even Mom and Dad. Seriously, Mom seemed absolutely relieved that Travis wasn't going now. He has an option now to become bitter about the Church for the rest of his life or to make the best of his membership.
All this talk we had while I was having my wonderful Italian Espresso and he was drinking juice. There we were, my brother and I, a young, 22-year-old, faithful Mormon boy and his weathered, apostate, gay brother. I was trying to recall my pre-mission self and it did not work. I just couldn't remember that 19-year-old goofball who enjoyed shopping for ties and could not wait to master Hungarian. I could not feel the excitement, the fear, the expectations. My heart is not the same any more. It has been hardened and its youthfulness has long been gone. I feel so much older than I really am.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. I am just not as young as I would like to be. I would be more than happy to be Derek's age again, I'd definitely do things differently. But then again, I might have missed my chance to find Derek. And knowing him has been worth all the struggle. So no, I would not want to change anything in my past if I was given the chance. All is well... all is well.
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