on brotherhood

Dear Brothers,

Seeing the two of you -- seven years apart -- awes and amazes me everyday. The swelling in my heart -- big and full and stretching -- is so unexpected. So extraordinary. Watching you together -- one growing so fast into a boy with long legs and large feet, the other still so small with a head full of baby hair and tiny lips parted around only four very small teeth -- it is like finally seeing Life. Finally knowing Love.

Bone -- sometimes, when you aren't too busy building Lego's, you read to Bird before he goes to bed. Just a few nights ago you did this, and I wish I had recorded it. Your reading voice was so full of excitement and inflection. You stopped, pausing here and there, to explain things to Bird ("Chicago is where we live, Baby" and "Look a purple plum, Baby"). I want to forever hold onto the memory of you guiding your brother's tiny hands over the touch-and-feel pages, so gently and carefully, and with so much love.

And Bird, I want to forever remember your sound of squeals and yelps of delight. I want to forever remember the way you adore Bone in a way I never imagined possible. Laughing at him always. Loving him so easily.

I know it will not forever be like this. There will be fights. Most possibly bruises and bites. There will be broken Lego sets, accidents, and many tears cried. The distance between you will grow -- sometimes seeming unbridgeable. But I hope that whatever is forming now -- the love, the sweetness, the adoration, the gentleness -- will always be there somewhere. I hope it is a bond with roots so deep, that they only weather and change and shift in the storms. I hope that this is the foundation of something that stays strong as this complicated thing called Brotherhood unfolds. And I hope that you can remember, like I always will, these early moments of love and how truly extraordinary having a brother can be.