This past Sunday when I went to Mass, I was seated behind a couple with a young girl and a two-week-old boy.  I would wager the girl was about four years old.  The young girl spent the entire time, both before the service and throughout, doting upon her little brother.  If she wasn’t grasping his tiny little hand in her own, she was grabbing his pacifier and putting it in his mouth.  If she wasn’t putting the pacifier in his mouth, she was staring at him.  She was beyond taken with him.  She was also very protective of her brother.  She did not trust him with anyone.  Whenever her parents would try to put the pacifier in his mouth, she would shake her head and intercept their efforts only to do it herself.  Whenever her parents would pick him up out of the carrier to hold him when he got fussy, she would shake her head and point to her own lap and hold out her arms while she said, “Here.”  However, it was in the middle of Mass when her mother tried to carry her brother away that really caught my attention.  The young girl’s eyes widened and she lunged for the pair screaming, “NO!  I don’t wanna be away from my brudder!”

And as I pack up my things preparing for my flight later this morning back to Boston, I can’t help but think of that, because I get it.  Here’s hoping that twenty-two years from now she’ll be blessed enough to feel the same way.  I know I am.

I love my brother and my sister dearly, and I am going to miss them something fierce.  Unfortunately for me, it won’t be five minutes until I see them again; our time apart will be counted in months.  You’d think that after all this time, it would get easier.  It doesn’t, and honestly, I don’t think I’d want it to.