A few weeks ago, my brother’s family came up to Sandusky, and I met them at Cedar Point. Jabez’s oldest two kids are finally tall enough to ride Iron Dragon. My angel of a sister-in-love, Lydia, stayed with the littles so my brother and I could take the older two on the ride. The first ride, we each rode with a kid. They loved it so much they asked to ride again. But this time, the 8-year-old and the 6-year-old wanted to ride by themselves. So my brother and I got to ride together.
It was one of those moments when we just looked at each other and beamed. Cause it was like watching a version of us: a little girl and a littler boy, just like we were. They are also best friends and each other’s favorite person. But when we were that age, we were dragging little rolling suitcases up train station steps, trying to catch the sleeper train that would take us on a 3-day, 2-night journey to the first city in China we ever lived in. While they have a basement full of books and toys, we played with bottle caps and attended underground church. Every good and bad and funny memory I have from my childhood has my brother as a main character. Sometimes, I could see him being suspicious of whether memories that my mom or I still recall vividly actually happened, because he’d been too young to remember them.
Louriz and Jabez were inseparable. Maybe we would have still been so even if we had your typical, stay-in-your-hometown, grow-up-in-the-same-school, have-all-the-family-traditions type of upbringing. But we spent a big chunk of our middle childhood in a foreign country, where our grasp of the language was not enough for regular friendships with other kids, where our homeschooling didn’t give us peers our age, where we grew up surrounded by adults who loved Jesus so much they gave up the comforts of home to be in a strange land. My brother and I came up with our own language, had stuffed animal Bible studies, built the best blanket forts with mama, and also beat each other up in wrestling matches over who got the remote.
While we cherish our common faith and shared values, my brother and I are vastly different people. It was a running joke that we looked nothing alike, even when my mother gave us very similar apple bowl haircuts. We are both introverted (as in preferring to engage with the world within), but my brother is a much more empathetic person than I am. While I am deeply distrustful of people and emotions, my brother loves people genuinely and is curious about their stories. While I wanted to be alone and do things alone, my brother enjoys collaboration and enjoys building teams. While I shrug my shoulders at the world being what it is, my brother shakes his fists at injustices and believes we should try to make it better. So many of the things I disliked about the person I spent my childhood with, so close in proximity and yet so far in likeness, are the same characteristics I’ve come to admire when the realities of adulthood hit hard. I have never not been proud of him. But as an older sister, as an Ate, I was hard on him in ways that only someone who believes in your full potential can be when they don’t have a fully formed frontal lobe yet.
Eventually, we were brought back to the Philippines for more stability. Overnight, it seemed, he grew taller than I was and I promptly declared that I was too mature for wrestling matches. I went to college in Manila, and we had to learn to live apart. I think our relationship improved with some space. But two years later, at ages 17 and 16, we found ourselves as displaced teenagers arriving at LAX with our whole lives crammed into overpacked luggage. One of the rolling suitcases, with all the shoes, didn’t make it. After a trip to Payless, we were once again stuck together as the Manuel kids. When our new youth group would go on the weekly after-hours Denny’s run, we’d have to wait until someone offered us dinner and a ride because we had neither driver’s licenses nor jobs. People were generous yet aware enough to make the offer to both of us or neither of us. We come as a set. We had to rebuild our lives in a strange land, but we had been here before. We had done this in a 19th-floor apartment in a Shenzhen high-rise, and now we were doing it in a first-floor low-income housing unit on Sepulveda Blvd. This time around, we had a toddler sister, Chynna. She was a game-changer. Having to relearn everything was made bearable because we had each other. We had changed homes again. But we were together, so this was home.
Over time, as it goes, our lives became less intertwined. Our father’s passing both bound us together and sped up the inevitable: our paths would diverge. We went to different colleges, moved to different states, and got married to people who would become our new best friends. Of course, when I was going through my divorce from my soon-to-be former new best friend, it was my brother and Lydia who offered me a place in their little Plain City house. I slept in their office for a couple of months while I was rethinking my life choices. I’ll always be grateful to Lydia for being who she is. It’s not up to me, but if it were, I would not have given up my brother to anyone else. They’ve built and are building a home of their own, and I can’t express how much that gives me joy.
Nowadays, I get to watch my brother be a husband and a father. Jabez enjoys being a dad. He loves his kids and loves spending time with them. He is protective not just of them but of who they are, of how they are different from each other and from their parents. When I visited them last Saturday, their eight-year-old had a conniption because the littles kept messing with her fall paper chain. Jabez calmly pulled her aside. I don’t think he realized I could hear their conversation, but I overheard him calmly start with, “I know it’s hard being the oldest…” That healed something in me. If there was any proof that Jesus and counseling work, I think that was it.
I have first-hand testimony that my brother’s children wish their dad would live forever. They naturally cling to him for hugs and snuggles. They’re the new Manuel kids now. When the adult siblings are all in the same house, the new versions are referred to as Manuel Kids 2.0 when it’s bedtime, to clarify that the adult Manuel kids do not, in fact, have to leave their seats.
Mundane nights like those have become some of the most precious appointments of my current calendar. My sister and I drive to our brother’s house, plop our overnight bags on the floor, and sink onto their couch for a movie. In true Manuel fashion, someone puts coffee on drip even though it’s already past 9:00 PM. Then we provide live commentary during the movie that would be unbeneficial to anyone else (including poor Lydia) but feels natural to us. As we get older, I realize more and more that these evenings together are not guaranteed forever. We live full and happy lives apart from each other, in different cities with different circles of friends. It gets harder and harder to find time to make the drive. But as Lydia would point out, when we are together we are most ourselves. Whenever I’m with my brother, I’m a version of myself that is goofy and unapologetic and child-like. Not only does he know me, he knows why I became this way. He even knows the parts about me that have always been this way. And vice versa. It’s a vulnerable position to be in, but it is also the safest I feel. Because I know my brother will burn the world down for me while I lecture him on why that is the most illogical course of action.
I love my brother for all the things he was and is and is becoming. He is no longer attached to my name, like the set of two we always came in for the first decade of our lives. But every once in a while, we have a moment like we do when we ride the Iron Dragon, when we’re back to being the Manuel kids. When we still have our own language, unspoken, where there is understanding that we can be truly ourselves in our little blanket fort, protected against the world.
I love you, baby brother. Until the next coaster ride.
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