Photo Credit Samuel Cruz
My husband’s best friend calls him his brother, and it’s not a term taken lightly. In times of trouble, joy, or even when a song from their college days comes on the radio, there’s only one person they call. My boys call him Uncle Sammy, and in a world of unreliable people, he’s the one guy who consistently shows up, literally and figuratively. How lucky they are to have each other and the common memories of a time in their lives before mortgages and kids. Somehow, these boys survived reckless antics and lived to tell the tale (repeatedly), giggling in delight every time.
The phrase, ‘My brother,’ or even ‘Bruh’ as an unadorned text message, is composed of layers of emotion. It’s an unspoken pact of friendship, a bond that defies definition. Different than Sisterhood, in my opinion, because Sisters-ness is all about communication and expressing closeness and connection. Brotherhood is often the strong, silent type of love.
My two sons, ages 10 and 12, are in the adversarial stage of their relationship, and they actively torment each other (and their parents by proximity). They will eat any snack if the other one wants it, sit anywhere the other one wants to be, or watch anything the other one dislikes the most. I’m told this is normal, but it’s annoying.
They go to different schools this year, and our morning commute, which used to be a three-person trek together, is now a two-act process in opposite directions. A few weeks into this new routine, my younger son confessed how much he missed being with his brother in the morning and seeing him around school. I encouraged him to admit to his brother and tell him how he felt.
It hasn’t happened (yet).