• Health
• Money
• Leisure
• Make a Difference
• Family
• Online Community
• Membership

Circa 1970 with a very special "Brother"

26 September 2009 ~ laughing through some memories at home

I’ve been thinking about my brothers. They have been on my mind so much that I ran into one in my dreams the other night. This wasn’t a real blood brother but one of the many brothers that I’ve been collecting since I was a little girl and since I haven’t talked to him in a year I wondered what he’s up to today. My parents gave me three perfectly good brothers of my own but somewhere along the road I knew they weren’t enough so I started another family of my own. My real brothers were all younger so it doesn’t surprise me that my adopted brothers were all my peers or older than me. Maybe it was just this unspoken need for a BIG brother and all the things he could teach me.

I never made lots of long lasting friendships with the girls in my life. My shy nature and my weird way of looking at things usually separated me from the talkative girls in school. I wasn’t really a tomboy but I figured out early that I had more fun and could communicate more clearly with the boys. They were easy to talk to even if the earliest conversations were punctuated with burps and silly accents and imaginative play. Boys made me laugh. They must have appreciated the giggles because the boys would always let me hang around even when it wasn’t yet cool to be seen with a girl.

By the time I was in high school some of the relationships had deepened into something different. I hung around with a lot of boys who had been in my classes since grade school. We had all gone through the crushes and broken hearted angst of junior high when the girls were getting preoccupied with the opposite sex and the boys were still a little confused about the whole deal. Some of my adopted brothers had even asked me out a time or two and when we realized that we had lots more fun just hanging out with the whole gang we gave it up. When we took the male/female thing out of the equation we discovered that we could really enjoy the deep, solid friendships. It was, and is still, a wonderful thing.

My brothers taught me so much over the years. When we were kids they taught me that boys are so completely different than girls and that is perfectly okay. They taught me that it was okay to be my giggly self and that I didn’t need to lose that childlike sense of play just because I had to grow up. When we were teens they taught me different lessons. They helped me learn the difference between a subservient female and a radical feminist and helped me find my own space somewhere in the middle. I got a glimpse of things from a male perspective and I learned to be more careful with my words and actions in the presence of men.

My brothers taught me that under the goofy actions and risky behavior there was an honorable young man trying to break out of childhood. They were loyal friends and stepped up to protect me from people who weren’t good for me. They held my hand through broken hearts and were kind enough to never say, “I told you so”. My brothers let me talk and they listened with an open heart. They let me return the favors. I felt cherished and protected. I knew I was loved just because I was me.

And then it hit me! I suddenly realized why my longest lasting friendships, the people who have played such important parts in my life, have been my brothers. I think I got all these extra brothers so that this mother of girls wouldn’t panic when my daughters started giving me one grandson after another grandson after another. I think I created my own band of beautiful brothers in expectation of the day when I would use everything they taught me about boys just being boys.

My brothers taught me to treasure the male mind in all its quirks. They taught me that anger might be their default emotion but I could discover the real underlying feeling if I listened and watched closely. I use those skills on a daily basis. I learned to participate in the conversation while a seven year old figures out a way that we can pool our resources and buy a dragon and then how we can train him together. I can sense the budding mechanical genius in the guy who visualizes things so much like his Granddad. And I can hold my breath while I watch a four year old attempt to boost his two year old brother onto a surface five feet in the air.

My brothers taught me that a little boy is born with a head full of magic and a heart full of courage and the lucky ones escape childhood with both intact. My brothers taught me the perils and pleasures of growing to be an honorable man without losing that sense of childlike wonder and fun. They taught me that mistakes don’t have to be permanent. They taught me so many things that paved the way for a marriage to my best friend and how to love five little boys in all their room filling, exuberant glory.

I still have brothers that weren’t born into my family. I love every one. And now that I know why I’ve been collecting them for all these years it doesn’t change the fact that I owe them a lot. I am grateful for every lesson and I’m eager to learn more but most of all I hope they know how much they have meant to me, how much they will always mean. And whether they are brothers or grandsons, those boys still know how to make me laugh!