My Baby Brother Turns 50

My brother Steve is 50 today.  Wow – that was hard to write. ..mainly because he’s my younger brother.

My pesky, annoying baby brother grew into the finest of men.  He’s worked hard all his life – sometimes two and three jobs at a time.  He has raised a most beautiful, brilliant daughter (who takes after her aunt, of course).  He’s also about to gain a great son-in-law when my niece marries in September.  He “adopted” one of my niece’s friends who needed a stable, loving environment and gave her just that.  She, too, has grown into a lovely young lady with a family of her own.  He also took in the step-son of another relative and gave him the attention and guidance he needed to make it through a difficult adolescence.

He has rescued horses and dogs and given them shelter and food and love on his property in Kentucky.  He’s actually allergic to horses, and has to medicate himself to be around them, but his heart has always been a bit bigger than his pea-brain (Hey…I’m his sister.  I can say things like that)  I like to think he got that big heart from our mother.

He was a volunteer band parent long after my niece graduated from high school, and for several years he was a volunteer soccer coach for local kids.

He’s the master of incredibly corny jokes. He signed me up for AARP membership when I was in my early 40s.   If there was a 24-hour Hee Haw cable station, he’d subscribe to it.  Because I grew up in a house with one television set, and because he could move faster, I learned to love all kinds of sports, and can recite the opening lines of ABC’s Wide World of Sports.  He cheats at Monopoly by hiding money under the board.  He taught me how to drive when I was a teenager.  His favorite Halloween costume was Captain America.  He hates Rod Stewart, but bought me the Foot Loose & Fancy Free LP for my birthday one year (with explicit written instructions that it was never to be played while he was in earshot).  He hates onions.  No one rocked the puka shell necklace better than he – circa 1978.  He carried a Hot Wheels lunchbox in grade school.

The photo accompanying this article is my favorite photo of the two of us together.  We’re in our “summer jammies”  - picking cotton in North Carolina.  Our grandfather was born in the cabin in the background.  I’m 5 and he’s 3. 

Best.  Brother.  Ever.  He is every bit the gentleman and Christian (in the truest sense of that word) that our mother raised him to be.

Happy Birthday, Goober.

(PS – all is forgiven regarding my Sweet 16 party, the sprinklers and that dead squirrel)