In my family growing up, there were two oldest children. I was the oldest of everyone, and Elizabeth was the oldest of the girls. In some ways, it really was like starting over when Elizabeth came. Little did Jason and I know that that was it for the boys. Two boys, then five girls. And Elizabeth was the leader.
First thing to notice? Her name is Elizabeth. Not Beth, not Lizzie, Libby, or anything else. Do you have any idea how unusual that is? She did have a nickname, a family nickname, when we were growing up, but outside the family (and, really, inside it, except when she was very small) she was always Elizabeth. We do call her “E” sometimes, but we’ve gotten lazy.
I distinctly remember the morning she was born. We were supposed to go pick strawberries – our family did that for years, every first week of June – but I woke up and there was this strange person in my house telling me that we weren’t going, because Mom and Dad were at the hospital having Elizabeth. Susan Elizabeth, actually, named for my mother and beginning a family quirk where quite a few of the kids end up being called by their middle names.
She caught a catfish at Four Mile Run the day her sister Melanie was born. Elizabeth was two.
She tried to play with Jason and me, and we did in fact do things together – I still have the movie “Silent Justice” where she played the heroine in the first movie I ever made (Jason, of course, was the villain, and Scooter Hossenlop from down the block was the hero), and the only movie I ever made – but that wasn’t wholly successful. She was all girl, and well, we were boys. She had dolls and dresses. She was a natural mother.
I don’t remember the first time I realized that she was beautiful. You know how you don’t really see the people you spend time with? Our brains shortcut to “yep, that’s Bob”, and other than that they’re wearing clothes, you don’t see much else. Well, I never knew she was beautiful when I was growing up. I can’t believe that as a senior in high school I couldn’t tell that my 13-year-old sister was hot, but there it is. She was. She is. She is still incredibly beautiful, maybe more than she ever has been.
Smart as a whip, too. It was Elizabeth that explained to me how to understand the radical fringe of the pro-life movement, long after I was politically savvy and should have thought about it. A few years back she tried, almost singlehandedly, to shut down prostitution in one of the counties in Nevada (as you might guess, the poll numbers looked great, but people lie to pollsters – in the booth is the truth, as we say, and the truth was somewhat different). Elizabeth is uncompromising about things she believes are true. She taught me not to bend to get people to like me, a lesson I really needed to learn.
She married Brent Earl, from Las Vegas, a guy that went to law school but really spent his time playing guitar in a band and losing to the Jones siblings at Nerts. He’s about 40 years older than she is. But Elizabeth decided he was the one, and he hadn’t a chance. Ask him if he’s unhappy about that. Go ahead, ask him. He’s been not only a good husband but a wonderful father and a good friend to me and mine, and we love him. E made a great choice. Of course she did.
And she can sing. And she can sew. And she runs. And she’s thin. And she has the patience of Job. She is organized and disciplined and although you’re reading this and thinking that you’d hate her for being so perfect. But you know what? You can’t. Because she’s also one of the kindest and best people in the world. She’s almost impossible to hate, although she is right now laughing out loud, because she can think of several people that do.
Oh, yeah. She’s short. When I got engaged, and brought my fiancee home to meet the pack, Elizabeth came rushing into the house, grabbed Jeanette, spun her around, stood back-to-back with her, and started shrieking “who’s taller!?! WHO’S TALLER!?!?” No “how d’you do”, no “welcome to the family”. Nah. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to be the shortest sister in the family. She isn’t. She has Jeanette by at least half an inch.
There’s so much more, from singing Janeen Jacobs Brady songs (and now singing them with her lovely daughter) to her newest campaign, which apprently is to point out to the world that the new fuel economy standards for cars are blatantly anti-family (and they are), but you get the point.
We love her. Her sisters worship her. And they should.
Happy 36th birthday, SEJ.
Tags: Elizabeth Earl
Posted on Wednesday, 3rd June 2009 by chrisjones
Posted in Blog & News, General | Comments (5)
June 4th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Ha ha ha, He he he. And I’m not even her.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:11 am
“She tried to play with Jason and I”
How many times do I have to tell you, the object of a verb requires the accusative case.
And what about “Elspeth”?
Dad
June 4th, 2009 at 11:18 am
“I’m not even her.”
How many times do I have to tell you? A predicate nominative requires the nominative case.
Dad
June 4th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Maybe Al’s one of them…..?
Thanks
June 4th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Corrected. I knew there was something wrong with that sentence.
Elspeth, like E, is something we occasionally call her, but I don’t think it rises to the level of a serious nickname.