The Unforeseen Sibling...

It was one of those moments that shocks you for weeks or even months after it happens.  A newly discovered dimension of life that's thrown at you right out of the blue, causing every cell of your brain to leap out of its skin.  I was sixteen, my younger brother fourteen, when they broke the amazing news to us.  News that our adolescent minds couldn't have ever envisioned in a million years: my mother was pregnant and we'd be welcoming a third sibling to our family.  

My brother and I had grown up undisturbed for more than a decade.  Fourteen years of playing and fighting spent in tandem.  But no matter how many moments one may share with their own brother or sister throughout their childhood, it is almost impossible for either to truly observe the other's journey into maturity.  Each is simply too naive, too wrapped up in their own growing up to observe anybody else's.  But now, being sixteen, my trek to adulthood had nearly come to an end.  And with the coming of this new addition to our family,  I soon realized that I had been given a simple gift.   It was a gift that I could chose to ignore or decide to embrace with open arms.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to nurture and hopefully impact this unforeseen person as he embarked on his own childhood journey, but this time, I was armed with a clear set of eyes and a much fuller head of wisdom. 

And that journey began just a few months later as I first held my baby brother in my arms, suddenly wondering how I could have lived sixteen whole years without this amazing person in my life.  It was like he had drenched every fiber of my soul with a saccharine of bliss, stretching the chambers of my heart to fit one more.  And as the years came and went; as my little brother grew and thrived right before my eyes, I found myself changing right along with him.  Finally realizing the true power one can hold by simply hopping to a higher branch, and allowing themselves to peer at life from an unfamiliar angle. 

Today my baby brother is almost all grown up, the years between his birth and now have somehow  breezed past me like the wind.  But no matter how much time does pass,  I'll forever cherish the chance life gave me to see things differently.  And I'll always look at my baby brother as that one missing puzzle piece, a puzzle piece to a riddle that we all assumed had already been solved.