Not Just Any Day

For nearly my entire childhood, I had a roommate. He was my younger brother. Less than two years separate us in age and we were always close. Well, okay, almost always. We were brothers, after all.

Almost all of my strongest and fondest memories of growing up include my brother. We played together, shared a room together, worked together. He was a bright kid and started school a year early, making us even closer in time, so to speak. We developed our own play world we called "brothers" where we worked together to destroy evil in the universe. Even when we were young he came up with brilliant configurations for little Lego spacecraft (before Lego had "kits" of pre-planned designs) we would build that would "blow up" with just a press of the top. Sometimes we played together and, of course, sometimes we competed. We would build fortresses out of Lincoln Logs and then assault each other by rolling golf balls. Last man standing wins.

I remember one time he and I put together a "show". We wrote a script and put on a variety act of odd performances ... just the two of us. We used the patio as the stage and the curtain in front of the sliding glass door as the curtain and -- viola! -- we were performers. We sang, told jokes, recited. Mom served cookies and milk to a few neighborhood kids. Broadway it wasn't, but we had fun.

I learned it was best not to compete with my little brother. He was always better at it ... whatever "it" was. On one of the many excursions where my father took us to Mexico to go fishing, my brother found himself the only person on the boat with a fish. On another trip we all did well ... and he caught a halibut that was tail-to-nose as big as he was. On a trip to Washington, my father took us on a lake to fish. We caught nothing at all and Dad said, "Reel 'em in; we're going home." I got mine in just fine, but my brother found himself "stuck in the reeds." We were all shocked when that giant bass jumped out of the water. This one was easily half as long as my brother was. And so it went. He caught fish; I caught ... me, my father, my brother. And that was the course of most things. I won red ribbons for my clarinet and he won blue ribbons for his flute. I was in the top 5% of my high school class, and he was valedictorian. I started college; he graduated with PhD.

You might think there could be some bitterness there, some tension, some friction. Not at all. I am proud of my brother. Sure, it used to aggravate me when he'd make me sit through magic tricks that simply showed how easy it was to fool me, but he was really good. And I honestly think we were pretty evenly matched at ping pong. But regardless of the occasional conflict or the threat of inferiority complex, my brother and I were always friends. We had something of our own world. We had our own playground of Legos that he and I played with no one else. We took over the basement in our high school years as our own kind of club house. We made up songs while he washed the dishes and I dried. We played duets on our musical instruments. We were, in the end, always friends as well as brothers.

My brother now lives some 400 miles away. He and his wife have done quite well for themselves. Married for life, they've raised two kids, both in college. He and his wife have always placed a high value on family. They've always been part of our lives. He's a good man, a good worker, a good husband, good father, good brother.

The two of us always shared a room when we were growing up (sometimes my bed when we went on family trips in the motorhome). We shared fun, friends, good times and bad. Today, my dear brother shares something else with me. Today he turns 50. Today we share a 5th decade.

I love you, brother. I am so grateful to have you as my brother and congratulate you on your 50th. Happy birthday! Enjoy. Oh, and take it from me. It's not that bad.