The only one

My brother and me

For 3 years and 2 months, he’s been my only one.

“I love you more than anything,” I tell him as I kiss his cheek. Usually he laughs and scurries away, his feet stomping on the floor as they always do.

For 3 years and 2 months, he’s been the sun which our world has revolved around. Every decision we make, every thing that we do, is exclusively with him in mind. My heart is full with him, him, him. He has never had to share. All of our love has always been his.

My only one.

For awhile, we wondered if we could even have another. Maybe it wasn’t in the cards for us, after all. After 14 months of struggles, and a loss in the form of an ectopic pregnancy, I started to seriously doubt my ability to have another child. Though I didn’t want to, I reluctantly had to start toying with the idea of having only one.

He’d get more of our attention, our time, our love. Our money and energy could be focused much more easily with only one. Though we wanted another, our family could be complete with only one (though I worried in my heart if that was true for us since it wasn’t in the initial plans we had for our lives). I started to envision family photos down the road, photos of just the three of us while Caleb grows up. In my mind, they still looked beautiful and happy, even with only one. Our sun, our moon, our stars, our Caleb. Our first born who made us parents. Who calls us mommy and daddy. Who cries for me from his room when he’s upset, or angry, or doesn’t feel good.

I love him enough to feel complete.

Then I saw the positive line appear on the pregnancy test and I laughed. After hundreds of negatives, I actually laughed in disbelief, and shock, and frankly… joy. I knew that from that day forward, Caleb would no longer be the only one.

In September, after 3 years and 8 months of being our only one, he suddenly will not be. He will be a brother. He will share the role of the sun with his brother or sister. Our world will revolve around the two of them. We will not love him less, rather our hearts will expand to make room for the both of them. Our decisions will involve the best interests of TWO kids, whose best interests may sometimes clash. “I love you BOTH more than anything,” I will have to say, lest one of them thinks I love one more than the other.

I guess I’m a little scared. I’ve wanted this so badly, and yet it’s scary. It’s scary to upset the apple cart, to change this life and routine that we’ve just now finally settled into. It’s bothersome to think that Caleb may feel less loved, that we will have to split our time and attention. He’s been our only one for so long, much longer than we ever planned. I’m grateful for that time we had together, just the three of us. Grateful he will have gotten to be the only one for nearly four years. Grateful that he got to be the only baby at one time, that he got to blossom into toddlerhood while still our only one. That we focused on him, our growing sun, as he became a little boy. But it’s still scary, isn’t it?

And yet it’s also miraculous. It’s miraculous for me to give my son a sibling. Though my brother and I are not the best of friends (that’s us in the picture up there, by the way), we’re close enough that we can count on each other. That we will always have each other’s backs, probably more than anyone else ever will. Though we don’t always agree, though we don’t always see things the same way, though we fought like cats and dogs… he knows me and he gets me in a way that no one else ever can or ever will. He, too, is the only one. He is the ONLY one, the only human on this planet who lived my same childhood, who has the same memories, who experienced the same traditions.

He’s the one who slept in the room next to me growing up, where we’d sometimes talk through the doors at night, shouting from our beds. He grew up on Journey and Boston (with mom singing horribly along), like me. He listened to my dad play the Beatles on the guitar, like me. He woke up at 6 am on Christmas and trudged out to the living room, like me. We did it together, in our Christmas pajamas. He is loved fiercely by my mom and dad, like me. We wore matching Old Navy shirts on the 4th of July. Our memories are shared, are linked, and always will be. We were shaped by the house we grew up in, by the people we are fortunate enough to call Mom and Dad. We went on family vacations together; our favorite was Cedar Point. We fought with our dad on Christmas Eve because we didn’t feel like cleaning for the party. We screamed and yelled over the computer because we both wanted to go on AIM, him nearly rolling me down the stairs in a computer chair. We disagreed over who got the front seat on the way to school, him refusing to get in if it was my turn. Though I shouted at him in the car, I felt cool at school being known as Nick’s sister, me the good quiet girl, he the charming troublemaker. We went to the beach and watched movies while eating Abbotts on the sand with our family: Jaws and Back to the Future. We collected Beanie Babies and rode bikes with our cousins. We swam with them in the summer time.

We hated each other. We loved each other. We caused trouble together. We pointed fingers at one another. I cried when he had his first son and I got to see him be born. He was one of the first to meet mine. To this day, at nearly 30, I still love to make him laugh; it fills me with a sense of pride. My cool, older brother thinks I’m funny? Well how about that?

I will never have this relationship with anyone else. He’s the only one. My brother. I am beyond grateful to give my son this very same thing because I am beyond grateful to have a brother, to be a sister. There is something so special about it that words aren’t enough for.

When we become a family of four in the fall… when my son is no longer the only one, there are some things I will want him to know.

Though I WILL love his sibling just the same as I love him, he will always be the person who made me a mom. There is something so wonderful, so sweet about that. He was the one I learned how to be a mother with. He is the one I cried in the middle of the night with, while I declared I couldn’t do it. He is the one who taught me that I COULD do it. I learned from him that it was harder than I ever expected it to be, but I also learned how much I am capable of loving and forgiving… because I do it with him every day. Though he may not be my only one anymore in the fall, it won’t change a thing about the way I feel for him. Because of Caleb, I learned how much my parents love me, and how much I could love, too. There isn’t a greater gift in the world than that… except for maybe the gift of a sibling.

Caleb — soon enough, you may not be my only one any longer, but you will always occupy the same huge place in my heart. I think one day, you will thank us for giving you your brother or sister, your built in best friend, the one you may “hate” during childhood, but will love as you grow older. I hope that one day you will remember — together — the ugly kitchen in our first house. The dogs you grew up with who were needier than most. Mom and Dad and their love of horror films. The way your mama loves country music and musical theater (and that she sings along to every song, nearly all of the time). All of Mom’s books and all of Dad’s games. All of our fall festivities that we drag you on and will continue to drag you on because LORD does Mama love the fall, and Halloween! Halloween is bigger than Christmas in this family. I hope you’ll remember, and laugh, that Mom is not so good in the kitchen, but that Dad could be a chef, especially when it comes to his Mexican food. That you’ll say — together — what fun we always had. Mom, Dad, you, your sibling. That you will laugh one day as you reminisce with your brother or sister about what it was like growing up here, in this family.

One day, you will look back together at your shared childhood, at your old mom and dad, and you will smile because no one else will get it but the two of you. Your sibling will get it, will get YOU — they’ll be the only one.