My brother and I have only said ” I love you” to one another a handful of times over our 27 years of being siblings.  It’s odd to think about because he is one of the people I love the most; have spent the most time with over my entire life. 

My first memory is of anxiously waiting in the hospital waiting room with my aunt for him to be born.  Since that day, I can count the number of times we have fought on one hand.  However, the list of things I have accomplished and done because of him is innumerable: sky diving (twice!), traveling to Iceland, training for a triathlon, trying the Whopper Jr.; making it through my divorce.   The day I moved out of my house he kept repeatedly giving me high fives and telling me what a beautiful day it was, Isn’t this just the most beautiful day? Isn’t this the greatest day you have ever had the privilege of being alive in?–and in his way kept me from the closest I have ever come to having a nervous breakdown. 

We both have an aversion to toothpaste (thank you, Go Smile  for revolutionizing my world by the way) and people who chew gum. Once when we were kids, someone mistook us for twins and he responded in a very frustrated tone, “How could we possibly be twins? SHE’S-A-GIRL.” Oh yeah, we know who got the brains in the family.  As teenagers, he was always the more popular one, but he never thought twice about sitting with me at lunch or sticking up for me the year our parents accused me of “ruining Christmas.”  On a trip to Scotland last year, he gave me a black eye in a drunken accident and never apologized.  Why should I apologize for something I didn’t do?, he insisted.  That’s OK, bro.  I never apologized for telling our entire middle-school that you wet the bed as a child and our parents made you wear a special pee-pee belt.  We’re even now. 

While I think that we don’t say it because we don’t need to: I love you, J (a.k.a. Donald).  Happy Birthday.