Sibling is a blessing
"It’s a blessing to have someone whom you can maintain an unwavering relationship with."
I clearly remember when my little brother Drew was born. I was 5 years old and too little to see him inside a hospital baby cart that quickly passed by my dad and me when Drew just came out to this world. Angry at my dad, I told him that he should have lifted me up so that I could see Drew inside the cart.
I was happy that I was not alone at home. I occasionally washed his hair when he was about 24 months old and I was 7 years old. We wore the same t-shirts, played the same sports, went to the same schools, and studied together. I guided and helped him with everything when he was young, and he followed me in his own way.
I was happy until we were separated when I went to the boarding school in Korea and he went to Canada by himself to learn English. I was 16 years old and he was 11 years old. I cried every day for about a month. The schedule in a boarding school was very tough and I was sad that I couldn’t see him for a year.
Since then, we’ve lived in different cities for 15 years. When I went to Notre Dame for my undergraduate study, he went to the same boarding school that I went to in Korea. When I moved to Chicago for my first job, he went to Carnegie Mellon university for his undergraduate study. And so on.
Our distance could not affect our relationship, though. We talked almost every day about sports, jokes, fashion, academics, careers, etc. For Drew, I am the first person he reaches out to when he has an important decision to make and when there is any trouble in his life, and vice versa. The best advice I gave to him so far was to study computer science in college. We were lucky that he really enjoyed coding and got a job as a software engineer in Seattle after he graduated this year.
We are finally reunited in Seattle this year and I am cherishing every single day I spend with my little brother (hope he does, too!). It’s an absolutely amazing experience to have seen him grow up from a little baby in a hospital baby cart to a full-stack software engineer for a big tech company in Seattle. He’s 6’0 and 175 lbs, so he’s clearly not a baby any more and I now ask for his help when I am stuck in coding.
Wherever we end up in our future, we’ll be together. For anyone who has siblings, it’s a blessing to have someone whom you can maintain an unwavering relationship with.