OUR FIRST BEST FRIENDS
Though my sons were once literally attached to me and will always be so, figuratively, the strongest bond in our house is between the two of them.
Technically they have been brothers for seven years, since that moment a 21-month-old Kostyn peered at the peaceful bundle wrapped in his Nana’s arms at the hospital and said, “En.” At first, though, they were merely two tiny boys occupying the same house and the same mother’s heart. Eventually they became playmates, then best friends.
But now, without a doubt, they are brothers. They have their own games, jokes, songs and habits. At least 70 per cent of what they do in a given day only makes sense to the two of them. They make each other laugh, they make each other cry, they make each other crazy.
I am lucky and blessed for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is that I was given two angels to walk beside me on Earth. They are my sisters — one older, one younger. They love me with an unknown depth and an unspoken bond that no one can match.
They were there for the genesis of just about every personality quirk and insecurity I have. They know my weaknesses and how to exploit them, which they’d never do because they can actually stare my weaknesses in the eye and still believe I’m one of the strongest people they know.
My sisters occupied and experienced the same world as me, at the same eye level as me, and there is an incredible intimacy in that that you don’t appreciate — or know enough to cling to — until you reach adulthood.
When I admit my failures to them, they do not condemn me. They assure me, even when I don’t believe it, that I am better than the sum of my mistakes. They do not coddle me or make excuses for me, but they work fervently to understand me and to help me understand myself.
My sisters are my lifeline. And when I’m sinking, they sense it, and they pull me up. When I’m broken, they pick up the pieces and hold them gingerly, helping me glue them together into something better than I was before.
Not long ago, amid a tough year of personal struggles, I decided to get a tattoo. I needed a visual reminder that I am stronger than I think I am, that love surrounds me. I didn’t tell my sisters beforehand, because I was worried they’d try to talk me out of it. I do not come from a family of tattoo aficionados. Nobody in my immediate family has a tattoo, and I wasn’t sure the reaction to mine would be positive.
But I did it — a permanent piece of symbolic art on the underside of my right forearm.
When I walked into my older sister’s house a week later, both sisters greeted me with harsh words. They’d seen a picture of the ink, and they indeed had a few things to say about it. Turns out they WERE mad that I’d gotten a tattoo — without them.
Why didn’t I tell them I wanted a tattoo, they wondered.
“We never would have let you get that by yourself!” my little sister said, thrusting her bare forearm at me. “We would have marched in there with you and said, ‘We want the same thing.’”
“Solidarity!” my big sister echoed, sticking out her arm too.
Solidarity. I snuck away from the family chaos a few minutes later and cried quiet tears of relief.
Not the relief of knowing they approved of the tattoo, but the relief of knowing these women are not just beside me, they are inside me.
I became who I was meant to be in part because of their prodding, giggling and defending. They’re still doing it, thank God, and they have no intention of stopping. Without realizing it, they are making me stronger, healthier, smarter and happier than I would be alone.
Someday, my heart breaks to think it, at least one of my boys will suffer a loss, or be seriously ill, or just find himself adrift, unsteady. If he’s as smart as I know he will be, he will seek solace in his brother’s presence. And those grooves that they’ve made in each other’s psyches, in each other’s hearts, will fit together and soothe both of them. They will feel a peace, a safety, that they haven’t been able to find — or didn’t know they were looking for — elsewhere.
Perhaps they’ll get matching tattoos; perhaps not. Won’t matter. They are already marked, in a hundred ways inside and out, with a single word that embodies the best of each other and humanity.
Brothers.