Especially during these tough days, my dearest brother has popped up in my mind on many occasions. I do miss him dearly and hope that he is well. Given that I’m out of any communication with anyone, it’s impossible for me to officially know or ask, instead all I can do is hope and assume that he is safe, well and happy.

Before having left for this meditation retreat, I sent him a small letter full of thoughts and feelings and generally chit chat which we have been unable to have given our distance from Brazil and India and awkward time difference.

A huge part of me wishes that we were closer in not only distance, but also emotionally. Though it’s been difficult to be since we have always been in different countries or cities since I was 17. If he was in Australia, I would be in England. He would then return for me to be in Brazil. I return and then he vanishes to New Zealand. He returns and I have moved to London. And so the moving from location to location continues.

Prior to our physical distance problem, was a family breakdown (also known as a divorce). I believe that at the end of the day, whether you want to or not, you end up picking one parent to side with. Whether we decided to take different sides to ‘make it fair’ or we truly wished to choose them, I will never know. But it seemed that we did both side more with one parent than another. Different parents. Maybe this also caused a slightly bigger mental disagreement between us. It’s not as if we ever argued about it. We never even spoke or discussed it but then again we never really discussed the divorce at all. I didn’t discuss it with anyone. I didn’t really want people to know. Out of sight, out of mind, right? If you don’t discuss it, then it wasn’t actually happening? Well what would you expect from a 12 year old girl?

I have always looked up to my brother, following every movement he made and trying to copy it. He was my idol, my hero, my big brother.  I wanted to be just like him, which is why I became a bit of a tom boy in my younger years. I tried, yet failed miserably, trying to play football with him and his friends. Instead I would just end up kicking and hacking at their feet to get the ball. I’m sure no one appreciated this. I would rather playing with the boys in the playground rather than learning and practising dance moves to the latest S Club  7 song with the girls. I always (at still do this day) lack knowledge in makeup, hairstyles and general fashion. Give me eyeliner and I’m more likely to damage someone’s face, whether it be someone else’s or my own.

People ask me why I refer to him as ‘brother bear’. I’m not sure how long it’s been my little nickname for him, but I do know why I chose it. My brother is a big, tough, strong, wise man. If we were living in the wild I would be the small bouncy cub who would follow him excitedly jumping and pulling on his ears at the idea of him taking me to the local river to teach me to catch fish. He’s my protector, always has been and always will be. An example of this is when I was in Year 3 at my Primary School. I had recently bought some new stationary which I was very ecstatic about. Stationary shopping was my favourite past time as a child. I would pick all the colours in the world and neatly arrange them in my pencil case. On this one occasion I bought some new highlighters. They came in a see-through case and in 6 different and bright colours. I treasured them dearly and only let people borrow them one at a time. No one was able to take one without replacing the previous colour. (Yes, even as a child I was pretty darn anal!)

Anyway, there was one girl, Kayleigh Philips, who was a pen chewer. There was simply NO way that I was to allow her to borrow my highlighters if she was going to ruin their beauty by placing the saliva and teeth marks all over them! She promised and begged that she wouldn’t and I gave in. Unfortunately they were returned chewed and demolished in my eyes. My heart was crushed. I cried and told my brother about it at break time in the playground. He was in Year 5 at the time and could see my poor suffering. This girl had brought tears to his little sisters eyes and he wasn’t very happy about it. At that moment he walked over to the nearest bin and peered his eyes in. After a while of placing his small boy like hands into the bin, he removed it with an old apple placed neatly in the palm. His eyes then circled the playground with his eyes until this girl was found, to which he walked mischievously towards her and threw the apple at her head. It was a perfect shot and she burst into tears running for a teacher. Okay, so maybe this didn’t solve the problem with my highlighters, but he sure managed to put a smile on my face. It may not have been the ‘right’ thing to do but it was at that moment that I knew how much love my brother really had for me. And it was really that which made me smile more than anything!

Another situation was when we were all sat as a family eating dinner. When it came to vegetables I was being stubborn and adamant that I wasn’t going to eat them (I was young, what do you expect?). I was told by my parents that I wasn’t to leave my chair until I had finished them. I moaned and cried all alone at the table. My brother saw my distress and walked past me to go to the living room with a napkin in his hand. He placed it on my lap and whispered ‘wrap it’, eyed down at my leftovers and walked on. I stopped the tears, smiled and did as I was told. Moments later he returned, took the napkin filled with vegetables and disposed of it discreetly. A parent then came back to find an empty plate and I was free to go.

Though please don’t get the impression that my big brother is perfect as he was far from it. He could be a little shit at times, teasing and tricking me like any brother should. When watching Road Runner (a cartoon in which the coyote would always try to catch the road runner with TNT but always fail miserably), he would tell me that there was an episode in which he actually catches the road runner and another episode where all of the road runner’s family would come and end up catching the coyote! This information baffled and excited me. I simply had to watch them! Of course they never existed but I would watch everyone and ask him ‘Is this the one? Do they catch him in this one?’. He would always reply with ‘Oh, maybe. Yeah, quite possibly.’ At the end when I was disappointed he would continue with ‘Oh no, must have been another one. Ooops.’ This little bugger knew how to fool his sister, and fool her well he did.

On another occasion I had a Barbie doll which I tied a small plastic bag onto to make a parachute. Clever idea, eh? Though of course I got this idea from my wise brother. I simply copied him. Well after realising that this worked when I threw my Barbie off the shed roof, I wanted to make myself a parachute. I asked if he thought a bigger plastic bag would work for me. He responded with something like ‘Yeah, should do’ knowing full well that it wouldn’t end as I had perfectly imagined in my own head. And it didn’t. I’m not sure who then questioned the idea of using a bed sheet to use as a parachute instead but he spurred me on insisting that it was a great idea and was bound to work. It didn’t. It just resulted in me constantly throwing myself off the shed roof and injuring myself more and more.

So this is my brother. The mind tricking, apple throwing, vegetable disposing, protective and loving brother. And I wouldn’t want him to be any other way. Brother bear – I love you.

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