As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a figure. He was smiling back at me. Skinny and scrawny, a dark blonde buzz cut paired with olive green eyes and a white, goofy smile, teeth spaced apart a bit, he continued to stare at me while I tried to figure it all out. As a newborn baby I wasn’t sure what to think, but I heard somebody say he was my oldest brother Joe. Of course, I couldn’t make sense of these words and I probably started crying since it wasn’t my mom. A baby always knows who her mother is. I can only imagine what he thought when he first laid eyes on me, but I know he said to himself, “I’m going to protect you with my life”, just as he said to his daughter the day she was born. Just as he will reassure his fiancé when he says, “I do.” And he always follows through.
 

Growing up I was probably a pain, just like every little sister should be, but he loved me anyways and never pushed me away. I copied his every move as though he was my leader and I was his follower in a big game of “Follow the Leader.” I played football, baseball, kickball, manhunt, and every other childhood game with him and his friends. I went on canoe rides with him and his girlfriends and jumped in when they were watching a good movie. Together, we went fishing on our family’s boat a lot. He taught me how to bait a hook and told me I wasn’t allowed to be scared of a worm. We stuck together like peanut butter and jelly. He was always my big brother who I learned everything from, and I was always his little sister to love and protect. Perhaps he has helped me to become who I am today, a tomboy. Joe was always my role model in life. Ever since I first laid eyes on him, I wanted to be just like him.

Joe always had a scent about him. I could smell when he was near ad tell when he left. It was either the smell of cigarettes from his addiction or the smell of fire. The cigarettes is one thing I hate. It is slowly blackening him deep inside and wrinkling his lungs with each puff he takes. We both know that if he keeps up his disturbing habit, his lungs will look like grapes that have been laid out in the sun to slowly cook, eventually shriveling into raisins. He always tells me, “Don’t ever start smoking, I wish I could stop, but I just can’t.” He is as addicted to smoking as he is to the rush of a working fire. As a little boy, his dream was to grow up and be a fireman, just like our dad and great grandpa.

I talked to Joe prior to turning in my application to the fire department. He was the most open and welcoming of the topic. Many people don’t see this side of Joe, including our family. Joe is the type of person who won’t open up to everybody, but he is more than willing to give advice to anybody who needs it. He has always been the person to pass out papers when the teacher asked for help, to run into the fire when everybody is running out just to grab one last toy, and to catch a bullet in his teeth for whoever needed to be saved. As soon as I brought this topic up, his brotherly instincts kicked in and he warned me, not of the men that everybody was so worried about (because all men are pigs, of course), but of the horrors a firefighter faces each day. He warned me that, as a firefighter, you will have nightmares every single night. You will wake up screaming and scared some nights while other nights you will just sleep through it, but you will always remember the faces of the parents when you tell them their daughter has passed away or that feeling you get when the chief pulls back the firefighters, but a small child is standing next to you still waiting for her mom to come out. In reality, you know; she won’t come out. You know she’s burning inside that hell storm and there’s nothing you can do about it. So instead of watching the house collapse, you pick up the little girl, push her long, blonde, curly hair off of her face, wipe the soot off as well. You hug her, look into her glassy, blue eyes and say, “It’s going to be okay” while holding her tight. You shield her innocent eyes from watching, but she’s also shielding yours. You have to stay strong for her, even though you’re thinking about your own family. The thought of your own little girl left in this cruel world all by herself. Part of you is hoping that the mom comes crawling out. You’re praying you didn’t miss her, and maybe she just wasn’t home. You will always remember the way the person from the last fire disintegrated in your arms as you picked him up. You will remember the way his skin was darkened to a crisp, barely looking like a person. You will be scared every night when you wake up in the dark, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world. Those visions are imprinted in every firefighters’ brain. Joe said, “There are many things my eyes have seen, but my mind wants to forget.” There is no forgetting.

Putting his worries aside, he encourages me the way nobody else does. He knows the risks better than anyone since he almost died twice in his first six months as a Chicago Firefighter, but he also knows why he does what he does. He understands me and the job like nobody else does. He won’t cover the truth because I’m a girl. He is brutally honest. He doesn’t deny that there are men at the firehouse who drink a little much and can talk a little dirty sometimes, but he knows that shouldn’t hold me back, just like I believe. I know that he will always be there to protect me. Even though I will never be in a fire with him since he has moved to a higher level in his career, he will always make sure I have the most knowledge I can hold. He will make sure I am ready to go into a fire when it is time. He will always be with me, watching over me as I walk into that hell storm.