To the brother I spent most of my life not really knowing,
We share a father, and for so long that was almost all we shared. Life had its own plans for us, plans that kept us at arm's length even when you kept reaching. You tried, more than once, to build something between us. I wasn't always able to meet you there. I was busy surviving my own storm, holding a marriage that was ending, holding my children, holding myself together with both hands, and I told myself I had nothing left to give to one more relationship, even one as important as ours.
And then I hit a place I didn't have a name for. No one left to call. Nowhere left to go.
You opened your arms before I even finished asking.
You gave me a room that became mine, a place to think, to write, to simply be, without having to perform okay for anyone. You cooked for me, real food, made with your own hands, the kind of meal that says I see you and I'm not going anywhere in a language deeper than words. Every day you spoke life over me, even on the days I couldn't find it myself. You didn't only give me the soft conversations. You gave me the hard ones too, the ones that ask more of both people, because you loved me enough to tell me the truth.
And then there was watching you and your wife. Not her love alone, not yours alone, but the life the two of you have built together. Imperfect, and exactly right for the two of you. I had never actually seen love modeled before, not like that, not up close. You didn't just tell me love was possible. You let me live inside proof of it for a while.
These past two months, I have found a strength in myself that I always suspected was there and never knew how to reach. You didn't hand it to me. You just made a space safe enough for me to find it on my own.
I don't have adequate words for what I feel for you. Indescribable is the closest I can get, and even that falls short.
You gave me my wings, brother. From what I can tell, nothing makes you prouder than watching me use them.
With a love I am still learning how to hold,
Lisa