Day 11: A tale of two brothers

I am my parents first born, but I have an older brother.

That line always gets people.

You see, I have an older brother, adopted when he was 16.  We’ll call him V. 

I still remember when he came to us.  It was a warm and sunny day.  I was 5.  I remember being somewhat excited that a boy was coming to live with us.  He was sullen, quiet, and he was lugging a crate full of Beatles albums.  I took me years to learn the full story of how he came to live with us, but the effects of why he came were obvious to everyone but my 5 year old mind. You see, V’s Mom had been ganged raped and murdered.  While he hid in the closet.  He was severely damaged from that, but hid it behind a lot of bravado and swag.  He was the original mac daddy.  He was the only 16 year old in 1981 that I know of who was handing out business cards to girls walking down the street.  To me, he was king.  I loved him as only a 5 year old girl can. I worshiped the ground he walked on.  And in time, he came to love me too.

When I was 9, my Baby Bro came along.  It was love at first smelly site.  The nurse shoved him in my face when he still had blood and amniotic fluid all over him.  I have never ever forgotten that smell.  And as a L&D nurse now myself, I make sure to clean off all my babies before I present them to their moms and siblings. 
But anyway, he was cute, but he was BAD.  OMG!  We fought like hellions from the time he could walk until I left the house to go to college at 18.  Then, miraculously, we became friends.  I think it all had to do with competing for our parents attention.  Once he got all of it at home, we got along just fine.  He comes to me with his problems for advice, and I tell him all about my adventures in life.  Since I am so much older than him, I like to think of him as my first child.  And I am sooo proud of the man he has become.

I love my brothers. 

They are both unique and different in their own ways.  I have V to thank for the fact that I know the words to almost every Beatles song.  And I have Baby Bro to thank for my knowledge of video games( I can play mario and madden with the best of them).  V and I are not as close as I would like, but we are making an effort to be closer.  As he told me last week when Daddy has a stroke “life is too short not for us to be close.  Family is everything.”

And of course he is right.

Baby Bro, Me, V and CDub