Baby Brother

I cried when I found out my mother was pregnant with my brother. Not the eyes-glistening, happy tears... big fat, sobbing ones that roll down your cheeks. She and my grandmother picked my sister and me up from school and the three of us sat together in the back seat while my grandmother drove. "I have exciting news," she told us. "It's something you've wanted for a very long time."

I thought we were getting a pony, you see. We had just moved to our farmhouse with 20 acres and there would be plenty of room for it to frolic and graze. I thought that was the exciting news we were getting. "Five isn't an even number," my sister wailed! "Everything comes in packs of four or six! You can't get five!" Erin has always been so logical, while I was more worried that I would no longer be the baby of the family. Oh and that another sibling was definitely not a pony.

Well, yesterday was that non-pony's 21st birthday. He's all grown up. But the two of us who sat in the back of the car that day will never see him as an adult. He will always be a little baby boy. The cutest little baby boy in the world. The boy who wrote, directed, and starred in a short film called "White Man's Face" when he was three. The boy who yelled "Hi Bull" over and over on the home video of our trip to Plimouth Plantation. The boy who wore a suit to Kindergarten for picture day and head-butted the kid who told him he looked like a lawyer. The boy who waited on me and brought me pickles and lemonade just because I could boss him around. The boy whose hockey, basketball, baseball, soccer games we always cheered at. The boy who grew up, got cool, but was never too cool to hang out with his older sisters. The boy who starred as Curly in the high school production of "Oklahoma" as a freshman and made both of his sisters cry again... but for such a different reason.

I love that boy so much. I love the man he's becoming. He has always been so full of love, affection, and kindness. He makes me proud to be his sister. It hasn't always been easy for him, being 10 years younger than his sisters, having us act as both sisters and mothers. But he's handled himself with such maturity throughout that I guess he's always been more of an adult than a child. The undying affections of so many can be suffocating at times, but that great love exists for a reason.

He's no pony, but we're still working on him: