Desperately Seeking Sibling.

Legally and biologically speaking, I am an only child.  However, I am not.  I have a brother, a ridiculously adorable brother, who has made up all the years of begrudging my parents for having only one child, worth it.  Rayden came into my life when I was in middle school.  I met him for the first time when he was a diaper wearing, nearly 2 year old boy with the reddest hair and the sweetest smile any child has ever possessed.  That particular night, he came down with an awful fever while I was babysitting him, and his runny little nose and burning little body laid on my chest for hours.  His skin was so hot, he was causing me to sweat, but I didn’t dare move as that might have been the most trusted and the most appreciated I’d ever felt.  How could such huge gratitude come from such a small little person?  However possible, I wasn’t going to be the one who ended it.

Over the next few years, I had the extreme privilege of experiencing a crash course in being someone’s sister – something I had wanted my whole life.  This may sound strange, but my reference of time with him (as a child anyway), is measure by what covered his butt.  I remember the diaper stage so well, even though it was short lived.  Those days were before the first haircut that transitioned him from a sweet baby to a growing little boy, and before he mischievously held up the back of my cheerleading skirt at basketball games for the world to see my butt.  When he was a baby, he’d melt into my neck and I’d pat the bottom of his diapered butt, enjoying the dull thud that only a diapered rear can make.

Then, came pull-ups.  I remember things like gathering his pull-up and PJ’s for his bath and talking to him about the fun designs on them.  I was still able to experience the dull thud butt pats through his pull-up, but at that point, he was a much busier, much more independent guy.  Those moments of melting into my neck became few and far between, and some of the luckiest days would be when it was just the two of us when he woke up from a nap.  Then, he’d forget he was too big for me and let me enjoy holding him until he was fully awake.  

The day he began to wear big boy underwear officially became the day I enjoyed doing laundry the most.  On occasion, his teensy Power Ranger underpants would find their way into my laundry becoming my folding responsibility.  Honestly, they were almost too small to fold.  Adorable.  It was then, that he was old enough to make his way into my bedroom at night after he’d have a bad dream.  He’d scurry in to my room, donning his undies and a long white undershirt and crawl into my bed where’d we’d sleep like babies until my alarm went off for school.

He’d go with me everywhere.  He’d belt out my favorite songs and cruise Main Street with me in his carseat.  He’d lie awake in his bed until I’d come home from a party on a Saturday night so we could have midnight snacks and whisper in the kitchen as to not wake my mother.  If I wanted him to learn one of my high school cheers, he’d learn it.  If I wanted him to help me carry groceries, he’d carry them.  He watched my every move and when I’d tuck him in to bed, he’d pretend to take out his conyaks (contacts) and his buhtainer (retainer) just like me.