I want to use today to officially thank my younger brother for encouraging me to start writing this blog and for being my “blog guy”. He is the “posted by MA”, which of course makes me “the Talent”, if I do say so myself!!
When my little bro was born I was five years old….and despite the fact he made me the infamous middle child I adored him: my “baby brother”….to be looked after, played with and shown off to all. Yes, I was, and still am enormously proud of him…..this despite many embarrassing and annoying incidents: These included at age 3 pulling down his pants to show people at the front door of our house that he was officially potty trained. When I started dating it never failed: While I was trying to have a conversation on the phone, quietly, so that my very strict parents would not know I was speaking to a boy, he would roll his drums over and started “practicing”, follow me, with his equally pesky friends, everywhere I went and routinely blackmailing me with threats to snitch to my mother.
But OK, I wasn’t a complete angel….One Sunday afternoon my parents headed out leaving me in charge with the pest who decided to spend the afternoon diving into the Water Well in our back garden in Sri Lanka. I decided to scare him so the next time he jumped in I closed the well cover. Timing is everything, the phone rang, it was my boyfriend whom I subsequently married. Time flew by because I so rarely had the house to myself to talk to him without my mother around. Yikes, about an hour later I suddenly remembered little brother in the Well. (I often wonder why my husband actually wanted to marry me after that incident). I slammed down the phone and ran to the Well and lifted it open and peered into the darkness, nothing….all of sudden the brat, who had been clinging to the ladder on the wall, leapt out at me. We were terrified and relieved although neither would admit it. Neither of us told our parents but that story subsequently became a family legend for his children and mine……..none of whom would ever be that stupid apparently.
The reality is that we always protected each other and all these and a thousand other annoyances were done with the knowledge that each of us would always be there for the other. And so it has been through all these years. So “little bro” thanks for being my wing man yesterday, today and tomorrow.
as I mull over the sink 