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There's once in a lifetime and there's once in a while...
and the difference between the two is about a million miles
Quiet, subdued, dramatic, easy… four words that don’t exactly fit in the world of Alyssa Noelle Schafer. From the day she was born Lindsey and David Schafer knew that out of the two born that sunny august morning, their little girl would be the more vocal one and boy was that an understatement. Alyssa, who quickly took to being called Aly above anything else, did not come alone that August day, no she had a twin, and Nathan Adam Schafer came into the world an excruciatingly long 5 minutes after his big sister. From the beginning of their lives, Aly and Noah weren’t typical twins, they didn’t have that ‘twin connection’ they didn’t always need to be next to each other and they sure as hell didn’t depend on the others opinion on anything, no, the Schafer twins were more like regular siblings than they were twins. Growing up in the household was difficult, someone was always screaming at the other, both parents and children alike. It was what they knew, it was how they dealt with well… everything. They yelled. Even for children, who were prone to yelling if they didn’t get what they wanted, these two were excessive, until about the age of 3. It seemed like the two had hit a wall at that age, everything settled down, the house was a lot quieter and although it wasn’t silent… Alyssa was still something of a smartass who had an opinion on just about everything that ever person did, there wasn’t as much screaming. That was unless it was coming from their parents.
The yelling and fighting between the Schafer adults seemed like a nightly ritual. For the kids it was becoming a monotonous task for them as well… come home, do homework, eat dinner, leave the room as the parents argued. Leave it to something like the impending demise of their parent’s marriage to bring the twins together, bring them closer. They leaned on each other if they needed something. Aly wasn’t good at math? No problem, Nathan was there to work it out with her. Nate needed help on a science project? No big, Aly was the creative one. At a young age, the twins knew that their parents weren’t going to be there for them.. Not while they were further destroying their marriage. When word finally reached Aly and Nathan that their parents were separating, they all breathed a sigh of relief; maybe there would be some kind of normalcy around, for once in their life. It had only taken almost 6 years of constant arguing for them to realize what the kids had realized when they were 5… maybe adults weren’t all that smart after all. David Schafer moved out of the house the night after the kids were told the news, he stayed close, moving to an apartment not to far from the neighborhood, he had to, he still had kids to support and raise. It wasn’t until almost five years later that Lindsey and David filed for divorce… officially.
The twins were nearly sixteen when a judge asked them where they wanted to live… they could stay together or part ways one going with either parent. Aly and Nate wanted nothing to do with separating… apparently that whole twin bond for them had taken a little longer than normal to set in… but at that point they were fully in it… they wanted to stay together and after much talk about it, they decided to go with their father. Aly had never wanted to stay in Brunswick, she wanted to see other places, yes she had her friends there, but she’d stay in touch with them, she’d visit when she came for holidays or whatever they ended up working out… but she wanted to see everything that she could. So just after their 16th birthday, the two moved out of Brunswick with their father. Which took them to Boston for a good 6 months… and that is where it all began.
There was something about Boston that just struck Aly. Maybe it was subtle chaos or the history or how completely diverse every square inch of the city was… but it was something and she was absolutely in love with it. It was there that her love of photography started. Aly’s father had had a long career in sports journalism, one that for a moment had taken him into the realm of sports photography and from that had acquired a fairly beautiful camera, or at least it was in Aly’s eyes. When Aly found it, her father had waved it off when she asked if she could have it, he didn’t need it anymore, he said… he hadn’t been very good at the whole photography part of sports photography. It went everywhere with Aly, she was that girl with photos covering her bedroom walls, everything from scenery to strangers walking through the common, it was all fascinating to her. The summer after they had moved to Boston, Aly and Nate’s father got a job that took them to New York City, a whole new city for Aly to fall in love with. And while she found the new place exciting and amazing and very busy… it wasn’t the same, there was still that something about Boston that made her want more or it. When it came time to choose colleges… it didn’t surprise anyone when Aly decided to attend Boston University that fall.
Having grown up the daughter of a sports journalist, it was easy to assume that Aly was something of a sports guru… since a young age she’d been involved in sports, choosing basketball above anything else. She played through high school while still living in Brunswick and although she didn’t get a chance to her junior and senior years because she had changed schools, she still followed it, playing it whenever and wherever she could. Though, with basketball her love of baseball was slightly over shadowed, it was a close, if not tied with basketball for her favorite sport and the moment she moved to Boston… well her baseball love and knowledge shined for all to see. Aly had never had an allegiance to a single team before… but it was hard not to fall in love with the Red Sox. Majoring in Studio Arts while at B.U. she had her concentration in Photography, but also dabbled in other areas of the major, finding that she was fairly good at free hand drawing and painting as well, though she wasn’t fond of certain techniques that she was made to do, so she stayed with her photography, keeping drawing just a hobby of hers.
Aly had pretty much made up her mind when it came to where she was going to stay after graduating college, she had an apartment lined up and a job working for a small local magazine and besides the trip back to Brunswick come the spring for the birth of her niece… she was set to live her life in Boston. See after high school Nathan had moved back to Brunswick, he ended up getting back together with his childhood sweetheart and the two were married when they were 21, not long after they had found out that Nathan and his wife were going to be expecting a child. Nathan had joined the Marines when he was 19, deciding college just wasn’t for him and had since been overseas once already. After the birth of his daughter Emily Grace on April 5th, that following November, Nathan was shipped out once again. Once he came home, months later, he was told the news that his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. A year and a half later, she passed away, and as soon as Aly got that phone call from her brother, she was on the next flight to Brunswick, she wasn’t going to let him go through this alone, not grieving and most certainly not raising an almost 3 years old little girl. Moving in with her brother, the two of them spent the next 6 years raising the child the best they could.
Working as a freelance photographer when she got back to Brunswick, Aly did everything from high school sports photography to real estate photography and in her down time, she spent it with her niece. With Nathan gone every once and a while thanks to the call of the military, it was those times that Aly took on the role of parent. There wasn’t anything that she wouldn’t do for Emily or Nathan and if that meant playing mom while her brother was away fighting for their country… well then that’s what she was going to do... Even if she had no idea what she was doing. 3 months ago, Nathan was sent back overseas… Iraq this time. It’s the first time since she had moved back to Brunswick that Aly was really the one in charge of Emily, she was the parent until Nathan got home… whenever that was going to be, that was the thing with the Military… they said one thing and usually meant a whole other one. They’re surviving though, Emily, now 9, is almost as brilliant as they come, surprising even Aly time and time again. She plays on a youth basketball league, on a team that Aly coaches, an outlet for both her love for the sport and need to be athletic in some way. She finds it odd being back home… in Brunswick, even though it’s been 6 years since she moved back, she still yearns to be back in Boston, she misses it, but truthfully, she would move back to Brunswick all over again because she knows that she’s needed here, and Auntie Aly just has a ring to it that she just can’t say no to.
( Oh, you might get lucky while the moon is looking on, but in the truth of the morning... the stars will be long gone )
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