Chapter 1

Many stories begin with a simple lesson learned, and our family's
story is no exception. For brevity's sake, I'll summarize.

In the beginning, we children were conceived. And the lesson
learned-at least according to my Catholic mother- goes like
this:

"Always remember," she told me, "that no matter what the church
tells you, the rhythm method doesn't work."

I looked up at her, twelve years old at the time. "You mean to say
that we were all accidents?"

"Yep. Each and every one of you." "But good accidents,
right?"

She smiled. "The very best kind." Still, after hearing this story,
I wasn't sure quite what to think. On one hand, it was obvious that
my mom didn't regret having us. On the other hand, it wasn't good
for my ego to think of myself as an accident, or to wonder whether
my sudden appearance in the world came about because of one too
many glasses of champagne. Still, it did serve to clear things up
for me, for I'd always wondered why our parents hadn't waited
before having children. They certainly weren't ready for us, but
then, I'm not exactly sure they'd been ready for marriage
either.

Both my parents were born in 1942, and with World War II in its
early stages, both my grandfathers served in the military. My
paternal grandfather was a career officer; my dad, Patrick Michael
Sparks, spent his childhood moving from one military base to the
next, and growing up largely in the care of his mother. He was the
oldest of five siblings, highly intelligent, and attended boarding
school in England before his acceptance at Creighton University in
Omaha, Nebraska. It was there that he met my mom, Jill Emma Marie
Thoene.

Like my dad, my mom was the oldest child in her family. She had
three younger brothers and sisters, and was mostly raised in
Nebraska where she developed a lifelong love of horses. Her father
was an entrepreneur who ran a number of different businesses in the
course of his life. When my mom was a teenager, he owned a movie
theater in Lyons, a tiny town of a few hundred people nestled just
off the highway in the midst of farmland. According to my mom, the
theater was part of the reason she'd attended boarding school as
well.

Supposedly, she'd been sent away because she'd been caught kissing
a boy, though when I asked about it, my grandmother adamantly
denied it. "Your mother always was a storyteller," my grandmother
informed me. "She used to make up the darnedest things, just to get
a reaction from you kids."

"So why did you ship her off to boarding school?" "Because of all
the murders," my grandmother said. "Lots of young girls were
getting killed in Lyons back then." I see.

Anyway, after boarding school, my mother headed off to Creighton
University just like my dad, and I suppose it was the similarities
between my parents' lives that first sparked their interest in each
other. Whatever the reason, they began dating as sophomores, and
gradually fell in love. They courted for a little more than a year,
and were both twenty-one when they married on August 31, 1963,
prior to the beginning of their senior year in college.

A few months later, the rhythm method failed and my mom learned the
first of her three lessons. Micah was born on December 1, 1964. By
spring, she was pregnant again, and I followed on December 31,
1965. By the following spring, she was pregnant with my sister,
Dana, and decided that from that point on, she would take birth
control matters into her own hands.

After graduation, my dad chose to pursue a master's degree in
business at the University of Minnesota and the family moved near
Watertown in the autumn of 1966. My sister, Dana, was born, like
me, on December 31, and my mother stayed home to raise us while my
father went to school during the day and tended bar at night.

Because my parents couldn't afford much in the way of rent, we
lived miles from town in an old farmhouse that my mother swore was
haunted. Years later, she told me that she used to see and hear
things late at night-crying, laughing, and whispered
conversations-but as soon as she would get up to check on us, the
noises would fade away.

A likelier explanation was that she was hallucinating. Not because
she was crazy-my mom was probably the most stable person I've ever
known-but because she must have spent those first few years in a
foggy world of utter exhaustion.

And I don't mean the kind of exhaustion easily remedied by a couple
of days of sleeping in late. I mean the kind of unending physical,
mental, and emotional exhaustion that makes a person look like
they've been swirled around in circles by their earlobes for hours
before being plunked down at the kitchen table in front of you. Her
life must have been absolute hell. Beginning at age twenty-five,
with three babies in cloth diapers-with the exception of those
times when her mother came to visit-she was completely isolated for
the next two years. There was no family nearby to lend support, we
were poor as dirt, and we lived in the middle of nowhere.

Nor could my mom so much as venture into the nearest town, for my
father took the car with him to both school and work. Throw in a
couple of Minnesota winters where snow literally reached the roof,
subtract my always busy dad from the equation, throw in the
unending whining and crying of babies and toddlers, and even then
I'm not sure it's possible to imagine how miserable she must have
been. Nor was my father much help-at that point in his life, he
simply couldn't. I've often wondered why he didn't get a regular
job, but he didn't, and it was all he could do to work and study
and attend his classes. He would leave first thing in the morning
and return long after everyone else had gone to bed.

So with the exception of three little kids, my mother had
absolutely no one to talk to. She must have gone days or even weeks
without having a single adult conversation.

Because he was the oldest, my mom saddled Micah with
responsibilities far beyond his years-certainly with more
responsibility than I'd ever trust my kids with. My mom was
notorious for drumming old-fashioned, midwestern values into our
heads and my brother's command soon became, "It's your job to take
care of your brother and sister, no matter what." Even at three, he
did. He helped feed me and my sister, bathed us, entertained us,
watched us as we toddled around the yard. There are pictures in our
family albums of Micah rocking my sister to sleep while feeding her
a bottle, despite the fact that he wasn't all that much bigger than
she was. I've come to understand that it was good for him, because
a person has to learn a sense of responsibility. It doesn't
magically appear one day, simply because you suddenly need it. But
I think that because Micah was frequently treated as an adult, he
actually believed he was an adult, and that certain rights were
owed him. I suppose that's what led to an almost adult sense of
stubborn entitlement long before he started school.

My earliest memory, in fact, is about my brother. I was two and a
half-Micah a year older-on a late-summer weekend, and the grass was
about a foot high. My dad was getting ready to mow the lawn and had
pulled the lawn mower out from the shed. Now Micah loved the lawn
mower, and I vaguely remember my brother pleading with my father to
let him mow the lawn, despite the fact that he wasn't even strong
enough to push it. My dad said no, of course, but my brother-all
thirty pounds of him-couldn't see the logic of the situation. Nor,
he told me later, was he going to put up with such nonsense.

In his own words, "I decided to run away." Now, I know what you're
thinking. He's three and a half years old-how far could he go? My
oldest son, Miles, used to threaten to run away at that age, too,
and my wife and I responded thus: "Go ahead. Just make sure you
don't go any farther than the corner." Miles, being the gentle and
fearful child that he was, would indeed go no farther than the
corner, where my wife and I would watch him from the kitchen
window.

Not my brother. No, his thinking went like this: "I'm going to run
far away, and since I'm always supposed to take care of my brother
and sister, then I guess I have to take them with me."

So he did. He loaded my eighteen-month-old sister in the wagon,
took my hand, and sneaking behind the hedges so my parents couldn't
see us, began leading us to town. Town, by the way, was two miles
away, and the only way to get there was to cross a busy two-lane
highway.

We nearly made it, too. I remember marching through fields with
weeds nearly as tall as I was, watching butterflies explode into
the summer sky. We kept going for what seemed like forever before
finally reaching the highway.

There we stood on the shoulder of the road-three children under
four, mind you, and one in diapers-buffeted by powerful gusts of
wind as eighteen-wheelers and cars rushed past us at sixty miles an
hour, no more than a couple of feet away.

I remember my brother telling me, "You have to run fast when I tell
you," and the sounds of honking horns and screeching tires after he
screamed "Run!" while I toddled across the road, trying to keep up
with him.

After that, things are a little sketchy. I remember getting tired
and hungry, and finally crawling into the wagon with my sister,
while my brother dragged us along like Balto, the lead husky,
pushing through Alaskan snow. But I also remember being proud of
him. This was fun, this was an adventure. And despite everything, I
felt safe. Micah would take care of me, and my command from my
mother had always been, "Do what your brother tells you." Even
then, I did as I was told. Unlike my brother, I would grow up doing
what I was told.

Sometime later, I remember heading over a bridge and up a hill;
once we reached the top, we could see the town in the valley below.
Years later, I understood that we must have been gone for
hours-little legs can only cover two miles so fast-and I vaguely
remember my brother promising us some ice cream to eat. Just then,
we heard shouting, and as I looked over my shoulder, I saw my
mother, frantically rushing up the road behind us. She was
screaming at us to STOP! while wildly waving a flyswatter over her
head. That's what she used to punish us, by the way. The
fly-swatter.

My brother hated the flyswatter. Micah was unquestionably the most
frequent recipient of the flyswatter punishment. My mom liked it
because even though it stung, it didn't really hurt, and it made a
loud noise when connecting with the diaper or through pants. The
sound was what really got to you-it's like the popping of a
balloon- and to this day, I still feel a strange sort of
retributive glee when I swat insects in my home.

It wasn't long after the first time Micah ran away that he did it
again. For whatever reason, he got in trouble, and this time it was
my dad who went for the flyswatter. By then, Micah had grown tired
of this particular punishment, so when he saw my father reaching
for it, he said firmly, "You're not going to swat me with
it."

My dad turned, flyswatter in hand, and that's when Micah took off.
Sitting in the living room, I watched as my four-year-old brother
raced from the kitchen, flew by me, and headed up the stairs with
my dad close behind. I heard the thumping upstairs as my brother
performed various, unknown acrobatics in the bedroom, and a moment
later, he was zipping back down the stairs, past me again, through
the kitchen and blasting through the back door, moving faster than
I'd ever seen him move.

My dad, huffing and puffing-he was a lifelong smoker-rumbled down
the stairs, and followed him. I didn't see either of them again for
hours. After it was dark, when I was already in bed, I looked up to
see my mom leading Micah into our room. My mom tucked him in bed
and kissed him on the cheek. Despite the darkness, I could see he
was filthy; smeared with dirt, he looked like he'd spent the past
few hours underground. As soon as she left, I asked Micah what
happened.

"I told him he wasn't going to swat me," he said. "Did he?"

"No. He couldn't catch me. Then he couldn't find me." I smiled,
thinking, I knew you'd make it.

Excerpted from THREE WEEKS WITH MY BROTHER © Copyright
2004 by Nicholas Sparks & Micah Sparks. Reprinted with
permission by Warner Books, an imprint of Time Warner Bookmark. All
rights reserved.