Singer, Tenor, Brother, Hero

Valencia, Spain.... sculptures.

"To the outside world we all grow old.
But not to brothers and sisters.
We know each other as we always were.
We know each other's hearts.
We share private family jokes.
We remember family feuds and secrets,
family griefs and joys.
We live outside the touch of time."
~ Clara Ortega

The Tenor....

"Our siblings push buttons that cast us in roles we felt sure we had let go of long ago - the baby, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the avoider.... It doesn't seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we've traveled." ~ Jane Mersky Leder

Stephen ... My brother... Happy Birthday!

"There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother.
Oh, how I hated that little boy.
And how I love him too."
~ Anna Quindlan

Today is my brother's birthday. We are nine years and nine days apart... not by design.. just happened that way. When I became a teenager, he turned four. When I graduated from high school and left for college, he was eight and in second grade. When I got married, he was twelve and an usher at the wedding. When he graduated from high school, I was in residency. He graduated from college two years before Nyssa was born... I had been married for eleven years. He joined the original traveling company of Phantom of the Opera in Chicago in 1990, when Nyssa was four. And now he is in Europe as a heldon tenor, free lance and all grown up. Now he is my hero, helping Nyssa pay for college when we hit a hard patch, buying this wonderful home for us to live in and generally being an all around nice guy. We miss him a lot and the visits seem too short and too far between. He misses the relaxation of being home and the glamour of world travel has long since worn off.

Of course we had our differences as children who were too far apart in age, but I have it on good authority that these differences would really have not been much different even if we had been four years or less apart. There were the arguments and the pranks he played and all that tattling. But looking back, he was just trying to act older and be with the older kids and teenagers because he wanted to be accepted by his sister and her friends. When I left for college, Stephen sent me cards in the mail. Some days that was the only mail that showed up in my box. He liked to send Peanuts cards, particularly Snoopy and Woodstock ones. He was in second grade and just starting to learn cursive writing so the letters were big and there never was enough room to write everything. But they were wonderful to me... I still have them.... NO, Stephen, I don't know exactly where they are without looking, but I know I still have them... somewhere.

Today we are good friends... the best of friends... there is no finer brother on the face of the earth... and I DO MEAN THAT!

Happy Birthday Stephen!

To go to Stephen's website click here.

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