Brotherly Love: Not just for Philly

Mar 1, 2016
2 min read

My daughter took the photo below when she was barely 3 years old while we hiked with my brother in Colorado.

It will always be one of my favorite snapshots because it was entirely candid and captures perfectly the relationship between my brother and myself.

My favorite memory will always be sitting on the roof of our house on the hill, he with his guitar and me with my voice, all the stars practically at our fingertips. I learned how to love the silence between two people right there on those shingles. I learned to get comfortable with awkward moments and uncomfortable subjects. As a graduation gift from him I received the book "Oh the Places You'll Go" and I still cannot read it without crying.

My brother is special, he's one of those remarkable human beings that doesn't quite know it yet but believes it might be universally true. He lives quietly in demeanor, adventurously in practice. We weren't like a lot of siblings who fight constantly or bicker for pleasure or out of boredom. Neither of us understand the point, gratefully. We had a few yelling matches in our years, but it was always solved by late night apologies. Mostly we bonded together and tried to make sense of what we were given parentally.

What's incredibly special about him though, is how he thinks I am someone special. He never fails to effortlessly build me up, call me out, challenge, disagree with, and encourage me. He makes me feel sparkly.

We were raised, in large part, by our Nana & Papa. We traveled with them, begged to go spend the night, worked hard beside and learned unconditional love from them. In a world of all-that-glitters-is-gold we came out grounded because of their influence. And even still, our lives have led us to often become flighty contradictions in ourselves: the extroverted introverts, freelancing Nomads. You know what grounds us though? Love.

Love is our anchor when we need to stop, it is our life preserver when we are drowning, it is our air when we are drowning, our water when we are parched. Love is our teacher, captain, life coach. It shakes things up, calms the soul and brings life to the world.

Everyone deserves to know of this love, unconditional and unwaveringly supportive.