Best Superman Brother Ever

In one of my earliest memories, my brother and I are sitting on a rocking toy in the church nursery. "You can't be Superman and Aquaman," he was telling some other children. "We are Superman and Aquaman." We were indeed... and that is one early memory there! As Kevin's little sister and sidekick, Aquaman, I couldn't have been much past my third birthday at the time -- if at all.

My brother would leave the church nursery behind when he began kindergarten, but his career as Superman spanned the rest of his elementary school days. We were different than the Superfriends of TV. We inducted all our stuffed animals into the Justice League, and gave several of them Superhero capes made from our former baby bibs. We were generous when it came to our Justice League inductions; we even inducted our rocking horses and a green eraser called Freaky that we got out of a cereal box.

As Superman, my brother taught the Superanimals school and Sunday school, as well. He was far more powerful than the movie Superman. Not even death was a match for him. He routinely made people alive again. When Little Blue Doggy got thrown up on and thrown away, Kevin declared that he was henceforth an invisible member of the Justice League.

By our teens, we had already gone through so much: illnesses, family and money problems. I had spent some time in foster care. By my teens, I was already pondering why it is that children are so drawn to the Superhero myth. Is it a desire to feel strong or powerful? At sixteen, I wrote in a poem, "We learned to read and write... we surrendered our super powers and became children, and acknowledged there were thing we could never do."

Do people ever become, in some sense, Superheroes again? Some say they do, when they rise to life's challenges or become parent to little ones who see them as larger than life.