Ethan: solid, enduring

You know Ethan.

That little brother of mine.

The one who is always so full of life.

The one who says funny things, and you laugh, and you love him all the more?

Yes. Him.

He's solid. He remains who he is.

He doesn't change. Right where he's planted.

Right what he believes.

Vicious about justice.

Kind in his love.

Stark raving mad in his brilliant mind!

Amazing in his creations.

 Yup. That would be Ethan. The one I should listen to more when he talks to me, because I never realize he makes me happy just to hear him. The one who has so much to say, so much good to say.

The hero who bandages the wounded puppy because the villain brutally beat it.
Who sheds tears because his mother cries, the one who jumps and yells because the good side won.

 He has a boat house. It's not by the ocean, not even close to a lake. But it's his boat house. The old garage he begged Daddy he could have. And he fixed it up like a home. With a couch, a fire place, swords, and blue curtains at the broken window, and big long logs on the floor along the walls. Bookshelves, too.

Rusty frying pans and coffee pots all black. Bits of rope, and Will's old backpack, the one from WWI. A cast off mattress, and drying herbs hanging from the beams. Red bandanas, tables with only three legs, a ladder up to the loft below a port hole window, round and all white with light. "Someday, I'm gonna ask Mom if I can spend the night out here. Yeah. When it gets all warm an' stuff. I'm gonna do that!"

 That one little brother of mine. Who rides the bike until the tires go flat, and still he struggles up the hills with the inner tubes squishing inside to coast back down and feel the wind.
His eyes wander when he's thinking. They stray from your face when you ask him a question.

His lips can't help turning up at the corners when he wants to conceal a secret, and can't.

He chuckles high, in his throat, and he listens. Listens. I love how he listens and when he doesn't understand, he asks.
Asks hard. Understands hard.

 Ethan. Who'll name his huskies Sequoia and Gagimi, and win the Iditarod, and live in the Alaska, and be a mountain man. He never takes off his deer anteler whistle. He wears long johns, and watches Peter Pan with his sisters.

His eyes. You should see their color. Turquoise, with rims of blue.
He puts snake toys in Dawna's bed so she'll scream.
He hugs her to show he loves her.
And every single night he locks the front door, and knocks on everyone's doors and tells them, "Good night, I love you!" saying everyone by name, as if to committ to memory that tonight everyone knows he loves them.
When we leave, with errands to run in town, if only to mail a package and we'll be back in twenty minutes, he says it again. "Good-bye, I love you."

Happy Birthday, Ethan.

I love YOU.