My Brother...

When I tell people that, at 37 years old, I have a 19 year old brother, they laugh and say "well, wasn't he a surprise?"

Actually, he wasn't.

I was raised in a foster home, the oldest biological child of three.

I still remember the day that I came home from kindergarten and there was a baby there, my parent's first foster child.

Our family always considered it our mission, helping out children and giving them the loving home that they had not had in their lives. Our parents weren't just foster parents, we were a foster family.

Over the years, I have seen some pretty bad stuff. You wouldn't believe what human beings will do to a child, it's heartbreaking. I've seen babies with third degree burns, beaten, abused, neglected. We once had a 16 month boy that weighed less than half what he should have at his age.

At 17, I thought I had seen it all. I thought I was a hardened and cynical when it came to seeing bad stuff.

You see, to do what our family did, you had to have at least some emotional distance. For me, it was crying. I never let myself cry over what I saw. If I got too attached to one child, it would devastate me emotionally, and I wouldn't be able to be there to help the next baby that needed us.

Until I met David.

It was a week before Christmas my senior year in high school when Mom got the call that there was a 3 month old baby in the hospital that had been abused. As soon as he was released, he would be coming to our home.

I was going into work that day, so I went an hour early to stop in at the hospital. I knew the nurse that was on duty that day and she told me "Wendy, this is a bad one."

When she brought that 3 month old little darling in and laid him in my arms, I cried. I broke down and sobbed and I rocked him and I held him and I promised him right then and there that no one would ever hurt him again. Not while there was still breath left in my body.

He was beautiful, blond, blue eyed baby and his biological mother had sold him on the black market. The people that had adopted him had done horrible things to him. He had broken bones, cigarette burns, razor cuts, and they had thumped his little ears so bad they were swollen masses of flesh on the side of his head. It was your worst nightmare.

A few days after Christmas, he came home to live with us in a body cast from the armpits down. We all fell in love with him, he was so sweet and so wonderful.

When I was in college, my Mother approached me. She wanted to know what I would think about the family adopting David, and making him my real brother. I was ecstatic! He already was my real brother in my heart, we just got to make it legal.

Mom always said that David and I must have bonded in those first few minutes, because he and I have always been close. Even though I got married and moved away from home when he was 3 years old, we always stayed very close.

He's grown into a handsome young man. As a teen-ager, and spoiled rotten from his doting family, he's been a handful. But even as trying as he can be, I still love him with all my heart.

I really hate when people find out that he's adopted and ask about his real parents. I tell then that his real parents are my parents. They are the ones that nursed him when he was sick, taught him values, and were with him every step of the way.

While he may not be my brother through blood, he is as much my real brother as my blood sisters are my real sisters. He is my real brother in every way that matters, legally and with love.