Eighteen is not so far back in time, but it feels like, well, like if time were continents, then it's Australia from me...I still remember the day I turned 18. I was just starting college, leaving behind the dysfunction of my family...it was a free and exciting time.

Today my brother is eighteen. That seems impossible as he was only three and a half when I was just getting the right to vote, and as E. pointed out, able to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law :)

There is no doubt I project parental stuff onto my brother. I can't help it. He was the first sibling I ever had when I was out of childhood already myself. I still remember vividly the day I came to see him at the hospital--I was fourteen and a half. My dad laid him in my arms, and this newborn baby just sprawled, loose-limbed in my arms, like he already trusted me.

He became a precocious, poetry-writing, tow-headed darling pretty quick. Then somehow, when I glanced away for a few minutes, he was this hip, popular guy with a car, a girlfriend and a whole life.

My brother is special to me--even though it's hard to communicate this to him without embarrassing him. His birth changed my life. After him, I was no longer "the only child." But he's also just a really cool person. He's articulate and sensitive and funny. The older I get, the more glad I am for my siblings.

Here's a photo taken of the three of us at the little birthday shindig we had last weekend: