My Brother

I'm a little bit surprised I chose this one today. Don't get me wrong, of course I love my brother, he's family! But more times then not I have wanted to throw something heavy at him to knock some sense into him...in the nicest possible way. And the reason I have used the photo above, aside from the extremely fashionable head piece he constructed at the beach the other day, is because there is no way he would let me show his face when I'm going to say something nice about him!

Growing up he was your stereotypical teenage boy, grunting in response to questions, moody, would never smile, slept the day away and most of the time pretty horrible to me. Up until around 6 months ago. What changed? He met a girl. One he really liked. Prior to now he was Mr I Don't Do Commitment, a little bit of a player. But this girl changed all of that. And it wasn't just me that noticed, a couple of the girls that work with him also mentioned to me that he was much more 'pleasant' at work, what had changed?

Prior to this year, the last really big athletic challenge that I took on was my solo swim across the Rottnest Channel. It was an early start for me and my team, up at 3am and leaving the house at 4.30. He rocks in the door at 4.15 am completely drunk and walks straight through to bed, expected to make it to the ferry to get over to the island before me 3 hours later. Not a word to me. Since the girlfriend, I had my next big athletic event - Tough Mudder. He made the effort to get up early and wish me luck, telling me I was going to smash it....wow!

Now I have had problems in the past, which were kind of brushed under the carpet in my family. I'm not sure how much my brother knew about because my parents tried to shelter him a little as he was quite young at the time. However in the weekend just passed, he actually approached me and expressed his concern about what I'm taking on at the moment and how my body is responding. Again, wow he does care.

So to cut a long story short, I am thankful for my brother, his new found sense of compassion and I think his new girl friend...she has made a human being out of my brother!