It is exactly what I had dreamed of 10 years ago when we decided to see if a second child would become a part of our future. I remember the exact moment I knew for sure I wanted to try for a second baby. I was watching out the kitchen window as our first born sat alone in the sandbox in the back yard digging in the sand quietly. He was a happy contented child, but I knew the moment his brother appeared in the hospital room and, just a few hours old, turned his head toward the first sound of John’s voice, that my wish had been granted. John would never again be alone. No matter what happened to me and his dad, he would always have this little blond headed spitfire dashing about his world to be his friend, his team mate, his confidant, his brother.
This fall Jake is finally able to join John in the time honored tradition of wearing shoulder pads and a helmet and for the first time, playing the sport he seems born to play alongside his older more seasoned brother. He’s watched from the sidelines for the last two years, eagerly longing to strut about, padded from head to toe, but mostly just longing to be with John.
But now for the first time in 9 years something else is happening this fall. John is going off on his own adventure to experience a new phase of his life. He’s become a Middle Schooler. For every way he’s been building up to this new change, his brother has watched and anticipated by his side as he checked out his new locker, the new hallways, the new school.
What Jake didn’t anticipate is how his world would start spinning a little differently. For the first time he is just Jake, not Jake and John. At church when it came time last week for the kids to go to Sunday school, the Middle School students sat tight. They have their own time and space now away from the younger kids. Jake, who normally bounces off without even a glance back at me, turns his head in a steady even stare and says, “I’m not going.”
What he means is, “I’m not going without John.”
He would not be convinced. That’s when I realized, the world as he knows it is stopping on a dime, and no one could have prepared him for it. The walk to and from school is without the pal to tell stories to and confide secrets to along the way. Lunch time won’t include the traditional bump or high five from the cool 5th grade friends of his older brother.
In fact, the very way he looks at himself is changing. As much as he wants to fight it, Jake is learning to be Jake without John. A completely foreign and uncomfortable adventure he would rather not be on. And as patient and tolerant as his brother has been all these years of having this little shadow tag along through life, now, Jake is neither.
It isn’t easy to see him struggle through these days, but in the end I know he must become his own man and that only comes from times like these. I know that not every family has siblings that are this tuned-in to one another with so many similar interests and a real mutual desire to be together. I am certain that the planets must have been in line the day Jake was born and I remain grateful that the gravitational pull of his brother is no less strong today than it was the day Jake searched the room for that familiar voice that would become the center of his universe.
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