On Siblings

I visited my hometown this weekend, mostly to visit my mom but also to start gathering photos for our wedding slideshow. Our venue has a lot of flat screen TVs and so I want to have the slideshow play in loop throughout the entire evening. I've never been a fan of the stop-everything-and-watch-this kind of slideshow, though I acknowledge that it's an extremely poignant and cherished thing to do. But I didn't want to make anyone watch it, so I think I'll be captioning everything and just leaving it on all night.

But I digress again.

As I searched through boxes and boxes of unorganized photos, it suddenly dawned on me just how much of my personality comes from my brother. Or maybe it's his personality that comes from me, who knows. It's no secret that we are freakishly close and have the same sense of humor and the same taste in movies and get in trouble all in the same way. We look nothing alike but all we have to do is start talking and there's pretty much no mistaking. As I looked through all these photos of us growing up I realized how much of my life has always involved him. We fought like crazy, but we were pals. And I felt this sense of new fondness for him, the only person in the world who knew what it was like when our parents left us in the Philippines to build a new life in America, who knows exactly how lonely that was, who entertained me through our entire childhood since both our parents were workaholics. My fiercely loyal brother who once threatened an ex-boyfriend of mine when another girl started flirting with him.

As I go through the process of wedding planning I am constantly reminded of the role that people play in my life, and I'm truly grateful for each and every one of them.

My brother rocks.