Happy birthday, bro

Today is my brother Bill’s birthday. I won’t broadcast his age, but I will say he’s my older, much older brother.

There’s all the usual childhood memories of a big brother teasing and protecting. One time while on summer vacation with Bill and wife, Kathy, and their two children, I met a young man who took me out on his boat on a small lake in Minnesota. Bill told the guy I couldn’t go out on the boat unless he could come along. So for an interminable afternoon, Bill, my beau and I rode around the lake until finally Bill took mercy on the guy and asked to be dropped back off at the dock.

Later as we climbed the hill to go back to the cottages, the young man attempted a first kiss, which didn’t go very well. I couldn’t stop laughing when I looked over the guy’s shoulder and saw my big brother running between the trees spying on us. Our last night in Minnesota, my 16-year-old love interest told me I was a sweet girl, but he couldn’t take my brother. The teenage love affair was over.

There are many memories that make me smile, but the memory that I will cherish forever occurred just last year. Bill and Kathy came for a visit soon after I bought my first house after my marriage ended. Another brother had just died, and they drove from Michigan to Florida just to help me get through it because they knew I wasn’t handling it well.

In addition, having divorced the year before, the details of living alone and owning a house overwhelmed me at that time. But the thing that almost sent me over the edge was the day the pull chain on my lawn mower broke. It was Bill and Kathy’s last day in Florida, and my brother was helping me with some of my “overwhelming chores.”

Bill didn’t quite know what to do with my tears and frustration as I stood next to the broken mower. I hadn’t cried over my 26-year marriage or the death of my brother Don as much as I cried over that sorry mower.

“I’m just going to sell this house and move into an apartment,” I wailed.

“You’re not going to sell this house over a broken lawn mower,” he said. Then he put the machine in the back of his van and drove both the broken machine and broken sister to Lowe’s where he insisted I was given a new mower.

After we came home, he put it together for me and showed me how it worked. Then I pulled the chain and in one quick motion, I was mowing.

I kept the house, and the lawn mower still works. And so do I.

No matter what happened to the kid in Minnesota, I came away with something even better than a handsome young man with a boat.

I still have my big brother, and he’s still running behind trees, fixing my mower and making me feel like the luckiest baby sister in the world.

Happy birthday, Bill.