Brotherly Love

I’m not sure I can do this but I will try.

In a few days, my younger (and only) brother and his wife and their three small children will be moving from Houston, back to his wife’s hometown in rural Indiana.

We’ve all known this was coming. It has not been a secret.

They have to do what is best for their family, and trying to raise small children in the rat race of Houston is hard and not good for small children.

In 1994, when my husband and I had one child, we did the exact same thing-packed up and moved with our 14 month old to a small town we had visited exactly one time.

As a new mom, I felt like the crime and city life was not where I wanted my kids to be raised.

Four years and two babies later, we moved right back so I could be near my mom.

When we moved back, our kids were the exact same age as my brother’s kids are now.

I understand the need to be near family and have help, and it’s been hard for our family to help them much due to our own crazy work schedules.

But, in my whole life, I have never, ever been far from my brother. We’ve lived within 2 hours of each other for almost twenty years now.

We weren’t exactly best friends growing up. That’s putting it mildly.

He was absolutely incorrigible as a younger brother.

Imagine Dennis the Menace on steroids. And then some.

 

 

 

 

 

He had some great gifts:

• He was very curious. He loved to take things apart. The problem was, everything he took apart was mine. And he had NO skill for putting things back together.
• He was skilled at vanishing, instantly. I cannot remember how many times we would be at the mall, long before the days of cell phones, and quite literally, you would blink your eyes and he would be gone. And he would stay gone. After the malls were nearly closed, and my mom had travelled the property at least three times with mall security and mumbled every four letter word under her breath, he would instantly appear at the car, looking at us all like ‘what, where’s everyone been?’

  I remember one summer day, he was grounded for something, who knows what.

  He got in the shower, which should have been a big clue that something was up, but I wasn’t a mom then and didn’t know 11 year old boys rarely take showers in the summer. About an hour later, I realized that shower had been going way too long.

  He had pulled my dads dresser drawer out, which blocked the window and must have weight 150 pounds, and my 11 year old brother had climbed OUT THE WINDOW and gone out to play. My charge had escaped

There were times when he would infuriate me, I would chase him around so I could just beat his a** for something he had done to me, but he was younger and faster and usually made it away from me.

He was awful, just awful-everything you would expect from a younger brother, multiplied by a thousand!

As the big sister though, I always got my revenge.

He loved Ramen Noodles, it was his favorite food (go figure). But he hated the noodles broken into pieces, they HAD to be whole. ;)

Think you can run faster than me? That’s fine. I can sure get the Ramen noodles out, all of them, and crunch them into a zillion pieces.

This brought the running to an instant halt, along with instant wails on injustice.

Loved it. Can you tell I still take pride in my creative revengefulness?

We were home alone during the summer a lot, and it was my job to make sure he got into as little trouble as possible (a nearly impossible feat.) A few times he would try to call my dad at work to report my few, I’m sure minor, infractions.

I would pick up the other phone line and sit.

You cannot call out when someone has the other phone off the hook. Heh, heh.

Think you can report on me mister? Good luck with that. I would just hold the other phone off the hook while he screamed about it not being fair that he couldn’t call out.

Saying he was sneaky, more like the devil, is an understatement.

One day last week, my eye caught one of those large photo frames we have in our house that holds several different sized photos. There is a photo of him holding my middle son as a newborn and kissing Tyler, who was about two years old.

I remembered that he brought Tyler a pair of new born Air Jordans to the hospital when he was born, when he had no job, and no business buying a newborn $60 shoes.

I realized when I saw that photo, how lucky I had been to have my children grow up around him their whole lives. They’ve had more head locks, wedgies, farts in their faces, and baseball games than anyone can imagine. He has been an integral part of their lives, and I am lucky that they have formed a life long bond with him that I know will last regardless of where he lives.

I was in the hospital room, helping (because he’s still such a chicken) when all three of his kids were born.

I understand the need to do what is right for your family. But, the air around us will be a little different, and it will take my entire extended family awhile to adjust to them being gone.

I hope he knows how much I love him and how proud I am of him-he is an amazing, wonderful, father-and how much we will miss them, how much my boys will miss the headlocks, the Christmas dinners, the Confetti Easter Eggs, the wedgies.

Now that I think about it, I bet he’s moving now because my kids are finally big enough to collectively take him down and return the wedgies and headlocks.

Chicken.

I guess I better Google the directions to Indiana.

And good luck with those Yankees, Sean.

Maybe you should ask one of them if you can take their car apart to fix it? ;)