Brotherhood and Sisterhood

On Nancy Mairs' "Ron Her Son":

The amount of emotion that Nancy Mairs shows in “Ron Her Son” is monumental. I can also relate to the feeling of having someone not biologically related to you become part of your family. Though, in my case, the person is not legally a part of my family, either, and even has a biological family of their own still. Even despite all of this, I view him as my brother, and I love him just as much as I love my other siblings.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived under the impression that I should have grown up with an older brother. At age four, I asked my parents if they could give me one for Christmas, not fully understanding the impossibilities of the situation. My parents, being creative as they were, bought me a Cabbage Patch Kid doll that was modeled to look about five or six – certainly old enough to be a big brother – and named him Michael. In high school, now the oldest of five girls, I learned that my mother had been pregnant before me, but miscarried. She swears that the child she lost would have been her boy, had she carried it full-term. As it is, though, I was her firstborn, and that I oddly knew from that young an age, without actually knowing, that I might’ve had an older brother.

As it is, I began high school without that knowledge, and met the young man whom I would soon begin to consider my brother. I cannot for the life of me remember how it was that we were formally introduced, but I do remember that I was in three different classes with him that semester – Essentials of Literature, Essentials of Art, and Biology – and that he was the stage manager for the school show that season. We began to talk more and more, and had many of the same friends. The next semester we were in a play together and two or three classes the same. We were both also involved in the school’s gaming club (in truth, it was the prospect of spending more time with him that was the deciding factor in determining whether I’d join or not, though I’d never have admitted it).

It was not until my sophomore year that we really began to get close, and I came to the realization that he was more than simply a friend to me. Before you get any ideas, no, he was not anything romantic to me (that short-lived phase had long since passed). I did know that there was something more than I had with other friends in this particular friendship, though I did not exactly know what. I knew that I trusted him more than I trusted anyone else I was friends with, and felt like I could open up to him. I wanted to be that person for him, as well. We were not best friends, as we spent much of our time separate, but that same trust and openness was there. I realized after opening up to my biological sister that the relationship that I had with her was nearly the same as that which I had with Brian. Though much of our time was spent separate, there was a sort of understood love and openness between us that continues to this day.

I hesitate sometimes to call him my brother to other people, because I know that there are many who will not understand this connection that we share. I do know, however, that it is a real connection, and am (and will always be) an advocate for the sentiment that a person does not have to be related to you by blood or by law to be your family. Brian will always be my big brother, and I his little sister, just as Ron will always be Nancy Mairs’ son.