Happy Birthday Baby Brother!

Today is Baby Brother’s birthday...HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

My first crystal clear memory of anything is the day we drove to pick Baby Brother up from the adoption agency in his home county.  We hadn’t settled on a name yet for him, and we argued the whole way about it.  I’ve always thought it was pretty special that this would be my first memory, even though this picture doesn’t really tell that story!

There are almost four years between me and Baby Brother.  When we were probably about 8 and 4 years old, mom and dad were building a big new machine shed.  One night while everyone else was in the barn doing chores, me and Baby Brother were poking around the construction site because they had all the rafters stacked up, etc., and it was fun to run around between the piles of lumber.  Until all of a sudden, Baby Brother wasn’t behind me anymore.

I back tracked and discovered that he had fallen into one of the holes that had been dug for the huge telephone-size posts, and there he was at the bottom of this really big hole.  I ran to the barn to get everybody else.  Big Brother would have been about 12 years old at this time.  So they made a human chain with (I think) Dad holding Big Brother’s ankles, and Big Brother holding Mom’s ankles and Mom being lowered into the hole to get Baby Brother.  I really thought he was going to die that day, but they got him pulled out.  He was dirty and scared but not hurt.  I don’t even remember if I got reprimanded for (a) being out there with him in the first place or (b) not keeping a better eye on him.  I just know we were all thankful he was all right.

When Baby Brother was a little older and had experienced the Tooth Fairy a time or two, he found an old cow tooth in the cow lot.  He was sure that he could fool the Tooth Fairy into giving him some “free” money for this cow tooth, and he put it under his pillow that night.  That Tooth Fairy...she’s nobody’s fool, though, and what he found the next morning was a nickle and a pile of oats!  That’ll teach him.

One of my favorite pictures of Baby Brother was on his wedding day with Young Man, who was his ring bearer.  They both just look so dashing and handsome in their finery!

To this day, my phobia about electric fences traces right back to Baby Brother. When we were kids, our cow yard didn't have a metal gate. We had a swinging electric gate. The electricity was in yellow strings that hung down from insulated cross bars. This made it easy to drive tractors through without having to get out, open the gate, drive through, then get out and shut the gate...hoping none of the critters made a fast break for freedom in the meantime.

If you wanted to walk through the gate, you could grip the insulated cross bar, push it open, then let it swing shut behind you. Handy, right? I'm here to testify that if you let your Baby Brother open the gate for you--all the while promising to hold it until you got through--he is going to let go before you are all the way through. The end result here is that one of those electrified yellow strings will end up wrapped around your forearm delivering pulsing electric current while you stand there in shock...pun totally intended!

I might like to give Baby Brother a hard time at family gatherings, but I love him to death and am thankful every day that he is part of my family!

Best wishes to you, Baby Brother, for another year full of love, happiness, and blessings!