They Say It's Your Birthday!! It's My Birthday, Too, Yeah!!

Today is your birthday. We didn't get to tell you Happy Birthday, but we did the next best thing and tried to be as close to you as we could. Were you waving at us? Please, don't ever get tired of waving at us.

I think about you a lot. Lately I've been trying to remember stories, things we used to do, things we used to say. I'm glad I wrote a lot of them down, otherwise I'm sure I wouldn't have remembered them.

Still, I don't remember a lot.

I've been wondering why I can't remember all the things we used to say and do. I've come up with a reason, at least something that eases my mind on the matter. The fact is, we used to spend a lot of time together just doing day-to-day stuff. And no one remembers all the day-to-day stuff they used to do. We usually remember the big things, the exciting things, the things that didn't happen all the time things. And you and I, we just did...things....all the time. But that's not bad. It just means my memories will come as I live life.

They'll come when I'm up at the cabin with our families and I'll remember we used to make scavenger hunts for the younger cousins and siblings.

They'll come when I see a no-bake cheesecake and I'll remember when we made one when we were left alone by ourselves because our parents went to Disneyland with our younger brothers and didn't take us. But we didn't care. And I got kind of sick from eating so much of that cake.

They'll come when I see a pair of ripped jeans I'll remember what you did when your jeans got too old...

They'll come when I sit at a cubicle with a computer and I'll remember when I was your "trainer" when we all worked at the hotel reservations place. And you told me you were scared. Because you knew you were in love. And that meant you had to get married. And that meant you were going to be a dad. And I was happy and excited for you, but also a little sad because I knew things were going to change forever.

They came last night when I was cleaning the kitchen floor and I put on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and listened to the entire CD as loud as I could. (Thanks for not minding, Zack :) ) And I remembered when you got that CD and we sat in your room and listened to every song. We read the words, we sang along and we looked at the cover and read all the names of the people there. We didn't recognize most of them. And we laughed at how weird the Beatles looked in those outfits. And why did John Lennon have his hands in his pants on every page? We learned all the lyrics to every song. We really liked all the music. (Well, almost all the music. "Within You Without You" was a little too weird for our taste, but we still enjoyed listening to it and making fun of it.) Every song makes me think of what we said and how we felt about the music. We used to laugh at the line "And of course, Henry the horse dances the waltz". Oh, of COURSE he does. And we'd always try and catch the extra "RITA!" and "Hoo!" that Paul sings in "Lovely Rita" and "When I'm 64". I tried to write the clarinet part for that song and play it, because you said I should. You said it would be cool. And it was. Everything you said would be cool WAS cool. To me. :) We brought in Tippy, our dog, for the last song to see if he could really hear that 15 seconds of kilocycle at the very end. We weren't impressed with his reaction.
I know all the songs on that album still. I listend to that album a lot. Funny though, I don't remember ever listening to it in my room or by myself. Thanks for letting me hang out in your room. Thanks for being a great big brother.

Happy Birthday. Say hi to the fam. :) ("It's....the fam!") I hope they sang "Happy Birthday" to you in the traditional family way: as loud and as off key and you can possibly get.