E & Me

I’ve been hanging out with my little brother a lot lately. Although at over 6 feet tall he’s not so little anymore. We are both kind of just hanging out at the moment and lots of our respective friends are away or working or busy it seems and as a result we’ve found ourselves doing nothing together a lot more than normal. I, for one, am pretty happy about this. He’s a cool guy my brother and, despite the fact that sometimes I want to kill him, I do enjoy his company. There’s only two years between us and over the years we’ve fluctuated between being thick as thieves (when we were small people often thought we were twins!) and hating each other. The two year gap has felt vast at times but as we get older I can feel it shrinking. Lots of my friends have younger brothers that are also his friends and we’re spending more time together which is really cool. The other week we played sibling scrabble—with my friend Donagh and his brother Daniel who is also Eoin’s best friend—which sounds totally lame but was actually a lot of fun. We also went to the beach a few weeks ago, all piled into the back of the car; my friends and Eoin. It didn’t feel like he was tagging along, he was just part of the gang. It was cool. Today we baked cookies together and then went for a stroll.
I can never imagine being an only child. With two brothers and one sister I know how lucky I am, I can’t imagine not having brothers or not having sisters. I get the best of both. My sister is travelling around the world with her boyfriend and my older brother lives with his girlfriend (not too far, but it’s not like I see him everyday) so without Eoin here I would be an only child at the moment. I hate that thought. I love having other people who’ve experienced childhood with the same parents, in the same house, who’ve gone through the same divorce, the same christmasses, easters, birthdays, the same ups and downs…albeit all from different perspectives. We are each others memories. I imagine us growing older, getting married, having babies, getting together every year as our kids grow and our hair greys. I love that image. I really love these guys and I am so lucky that I get to call them family.