Blue spaghetti

My brother is ten years younger than I am. It would have been very easy for us not to really know each other as people and for me to just be "the older sister" and that's all. But the boy happens to be one of my closest friends.

The fact that we are so close is not by chance. As the older of the two it was my responsibility to cultivate a relationship with him when he was little, the rest just followed suit as he grew into a man.

We used to do all sorts of silly things together. I would pick him up after school when I was 17 and he was 7. I would pretend to forget how to drive and leave it up to him to explain how to use the pedals and what turns to make to get home. When our parents would go away for business, we'd have crazy dinners like blue spaghetti (just put lots of blue food coloring in the boiling water) or we'd have "reverse night" where we'd eat dessert first, then our meal. When he was a bit older I took him to get autographs from countless baseball players and we even cut school together to go see the 1993 Phillies at City Hall after the World Series.

Now he is a grown man and married to an amazing woman that adore as much as I adore him. Our relationship has changed and grown as we have done, but we are still the same silly kids we've always been at heart. And, I bet you money he'd still eat blue spaghetti if I made him some.