And The Waves Crash On

Chapter One

I grew up beside the ocean. The deep, dark, and mysteriously beautiful Pacific is visible from every window in my house. Since I've been around the water long before I could walk, everyone always assumes that I'm a world class surfer. Well, that is so far from the truth I can't see it with a telescope. The truth is I've never really had a passion for surfing. I mean yeah I go out every once and awhile with my friends and my brother, but it's definitely something I can live without. My brother Jonathan on the other hand, he would surf all day every day if you'd let him. My mother always said he had salt water in his veins, and I believed it. I on the other hand just prefer to float around all day. I guess that's where I got my nickname 'Lilypad' from.

As I mentioned, I have an older brother named Jonathan. He's nine years older than me, but despite our gap in age we still did everything together. I'd go surfing with him, and he'd play dolls with me, although he'll never admit it. Since we are so close I really minded it when he moved to Nova Scotia to attend the Coast Guard College. I was only nine at the time and I wasn't used to not having anybody around to do stuff with. After about a month though things got a lot easier and I actually kind of enjoyed getting all of the attention. And besides, I thought he'd come home in a year or so and things would just pick up where they left off, but boy was I wrong.

I had just turned thirteen when John graduated. I was so excited for him to come back home so that we could go surfing, and play dolls and Tonka trucks. However he brought something home from college that I didn't expect. He brought home a girl. Now just on a side note, I love Claire. She is funny, smart, beautiful, and a very wonderful mother to my nieces and nephew, but as a thirteen year old I only saw her as trying to steal my brother and I did not like that. They even brought me along on countless of their dates, and she bought me a teddy bear bigger than John, but I still despised her.

Despite my strong efforts to convince John he was better off single, they got married on August 6th, 2014. I was the flower girl, very cliché I know, and they even had the nerve to make me a play date with Claire's seven year old cousin who still picked his nose. I was fourteen at the time and very repelled. I was worried that after the wedding Claire and John would move far, far away to Canada or something, but thankfully they only moved a couple houses away. It was great to still have him around some and Claire was surprisingly starting to grow on me.

I still held on to a false hope that Claire would run away and John could live with us again, but that completely diminished on October 19th, 2015, the day my niece Meghan Claire Mae Casey was born. That was one of the best days of my life, especially since I got to miss school to meet her, but also because she was the most adorable thing I had seen in my mere sixteen years of existence. I'm not exactly sure why but after that day I no longer hated Claire. As a matter of fact I finally began to think of her as a sister. I'm not sure if it was the defeat because I knew she'd be sticking around, or if it was just because I finally smelt the roses and smartened up. Whatever it was I'm just glad it didn't take me as long as it could've for me to warm up to her.

The babies didn't stop at Meghan though. On May 10th, 2016 Jacob Jonathan Adam Casey made his way into the world at 11:11am. John always says as soon as the clock turned he wished for a boy, and sure enough, less than sixty seconds later he had one. Sierra Lillian Lauren Casey made a surprise entrance a month early on June 11th, 2017. After some minor complications and a lot of monitoring, both Sierra and Claire are doing very well. Except Claire's still not satisfied. She wants another one. It wouldn't surprise me if they end up with ten kids honestly. Then he'd have a whole baseball team plus one to take surfing with him. His current dream for his kids is for one of them to become a professional surfer, but so far all of them have started bawling when he puts them on a surfboard, so we'll see how that plan works out.