My Brother P

All of my 5 siblings are amazing in their own unique ways. Our parents are…..amazingly unique. More on them later, right now I want to talk about my oldest brother P. P is 12 years my senior (the oldest of the 6 of us) and is geographically closest to me. He also lives in Northern Virginia. Although in his drive to my house during rush-hour he probably saw more traffic than he would have if he’d driven to Indiana to visit our parents.


12 years is a long time. Before I was 7 he was off in college and was only home for a handful of summers after that, consequently I have no real memories of living in the same house with my brother. What I have is a newspaper photo of me adjusting the tassel on his cap. Then he was gone. He started his new adult life that didn’t really include an elementary-aged sister. His oldest daughter was born before I turned 16. I don’t have any “remember when we did this” stories with P. I’ve only ever known him as an adult, and maybe he still has a hard time knowing me as an adult. We have always been at different stages in our lives: P can leave his daughters home alone and go on a date with his wife….I still have to pee with the door open.

Last Thursday (backward pants day), there was an evening Father-Son event at H’s school. I forwarded the invitation to P because he is my brother and also H’s godfather to see if he was available. I really expected him to say “no”…it was a weeknight and would make for a really long day for P, but he didn’t. He couldn’t have been more excited.

P stayed for a little while after he brought H back, and the little boys were in bed. We talked about how I’m doing with D’s deployment. We talked about his continued health (5 years cancer free), and we talked about our children. His oldest will be heading off to college in another year, while my youngest will be starting kindergarten. It was a nice chat, just the two of us. We may never be really close, but this was really meaningful to me. I am grateful for my brother.