My Younger Older Brother Part 2

It wasn't until his college years when my brother finally started to blossom. He was amongst young women now, and he was making fast friends in his class. He also started to do well in his class because he wanted to outdo the smartest girl in class, to impress her. (Why is there always a girl involved? If only you girls knew the way you have us wrapped around your fingers).

In fact, he excelled in college and his university days academically - in retrospect, maybe we should have started him in a coed school from when he was seven! Socially, he was much better as well, still being himself amongst the 'normal' crowd, but adapting better to their etiquettes.

Over the past few years, I have grown in my admiration and love for my older brother. We are similar in many ways but still retain the opposites of our childhood.

I care too much about what people think and that dictates the way I act, while he doesn't care at all about people's opinions. This can be detrimental, but it has also allowed him the freedom to do things his way. I remember when Dad was in a wheelchair, and we would often go out as a family on Sunday evenings. Some of the family members, myself included, would 'umm' and 'ahh' because going out in public always attracted unwanted attention because of Dad's condition.

My brother, on the other hand, would hurry us up, and shoo us into the car, and then we'd go out, and have a great time, which we otherwise wouldn't have done had he not been there.

Living with him here, I continue to see the other traits that make him wonderful - he is able to love unconditionally, and it is evident in the way he serves the members of his cell group at church. He continues to invest faith and love in people the 'normal' world would have turned their noses up at, 'outcasts' like himself once.

He also carries a level head on his shoulders. Yes, he can get emotional about things that he is passionate about, but he is often slow to anger, and I can attest to that, since I'm not the easiest person to live with sometimes.

Today, we decided to go for a drive to Williamstown, because he wanted to go somewhere outside - to study his CA stuff. Initially, we were supposed to go to the Great Ocean Road for a day trip to 'study' - try to work out his mind, 'cos I can't! - but I had to run some errands in the morning.

So, come lunchtime, he dragged me out of the house and into the car. I was quite tired and a little irritable, but he was patient, and we made the drive down there, and it was beautiful. Williamstown is a bayside town, and it was a gorgeous sight - with the silver waters in the foreground, and the boats and yachts rocking gently in the distance, and against this was the backdrop of the Melbourne city skyline.

It wasn't the warmest of days, to be fair. Fifteen minutes out in the bone-chilling wind on the benches surrounded by evil-looking seagulls was about as much as we could take, and we spent most of the time in my car. I was reading Alexander McCall Smith's latest 'The Good Husband of Zebra Drive' up the front while my brother was in the back, studiously going through his notes.

I fell asleep in the car, not once but twice! This is definitely a day off well spent! We stayed until it was sundown, and I was about to drive off to dinner because my brother had just finished his reading his notes. 'Wait!' he cried. 'I want to go for a run!'

'In your jeans and walking shoes?' my mind yelled out. 'You'll come back soon, it's freezing!' I said. He dashed out of the car and onto the nearby green grass with a small playground on it. I went back to my book, and it was only when I looked up, to my right five minutes later did I see him on the swings by himself, swinging up and down, enjoying himself uninhibitedly.

I couldn't have loved him anymore than I did at that very moment. Yes, my brother's in the real world, working, earning a living, going through life like the rest of us. But there was still a child in him that he would not suppress, who he would let run out once in awhile, laughing freely into the skies, without a care about the world.

It's because my brother is, shall we say, special.