Brothers, ugh....

Have I ever told you about my brother Jory?  Yes, Jory.  JOE-REE.  Sorry, I have to do that, his name is hard when you first meet him.

He has a unique place in the family.  Jory and I share a mom, but have different dads.  He is the product of 2 second marriages - meaning our mom's second and his dad's second.  He is the third child, both on mom and dad's side, but the fifth overall child.  Since he's not the baby, this puts him in an odd place.  In one way an oldest, in so many the third child.

He really has a different perspective than I do.  When I think about my family, I have a mom, a dad, two brothers and a sister.  But, one of my brothers shares all of that with me - mom, dad, extended family, little brother, little sister.  Jory, and Cari (my sis), also have a whole other side to their family.  Which is hard for me to imagine, since, to me, they are my family, my siblings.

Jory is eleven years younger than me.  I was so excited when my mom was pregnant with him.  I was excited to learn about grown up things, like pregnancy.  I felt like I was getting something my friends didn't have, a front row seat to learn all about this.  Plus - bonus - I might have a SISTER!  I already had one stinky little brother, who needed another?

But, I got the extra little brother.  I don't remember the night, or day that he was born.  I do remember when he would cry at night, it took everything I had not to run in there and pick him up and comfort him.  I was always very concerned that my mom wasn't getting up fast enough.  I remember one time I was baby-sitting.  I was changing his diaper (my mom did cloth diapers back then, but they were way harder than they are now), and I accidentally stuck him with a diaper pin.  Oh my god!  I was mortified!  And he was crying and I was crying and so upset that I had hurt him, even though it was barely a scratch on his little belly.

Jory was the fearless child.  Still to this day has little fear.  One time, he was toddler aged, again, I was babysitting.  The phone rang mid diaper change.  This was before the days of telemarketers, and cordless phones were all the rage, but we didn't have one.  So, I scrambled to answer the phone, only to turn around and see a naked toddler run out the front door.  He was so excited to be naked and free, like Forrest, he was running!  He was caught quickly and brought back to the land of diapers and clothes.

Jory is the child that is lucky to be alive at 23.  He brought a telephone table down on himself, and had a bruised bump on his head that I thought would never go away.  He ate dirt.  He fell out off a tree, lucky to have a swing set break his fall (seriously).  He had is hand slammed in the heavy garage door.  He gashed his head open at the pool, doing some tricks.  He was arrested the night Olivia was born (at 14) for shooting paint balls at moving cars.

It never seemed to bother him to get into trouble.  If he tried something and got caught, he'd shrug it off and move on to something else.  He moved to Mississippi with my mom shortly after I got married.  When college-aged he moved back to Illinois and in with us.  He's been with us for most of the past five years.  I've been lucky to see the way he's growing up.  The way he's learned to be responsible and keeps learning more about it as time goes by.  The day is looming near when he has to turn in his kid shoes and become a grown up.  He will be graduating college this year.

I am proud of this baby brother of mine.  I think he's had a different life than I can ever imagine.  He makes different choices than I would have made.  He's a smart kid, that is turning into a smart adult.  He's found a great girl that he's really attached to.  I really am proud of him, and am excited to see how his adulthood shapes up.