Et Amore

In light of my last post about volunteer moms who are helping take care of special kids in Manila, I'm posting a journal entry that I wrote about my brother last January 29, 2006.

Mi Hermano

My brother Louis jumps out of bed with the enthusiasm of a 4-year-old who is about to open his presents on Christmas day. Every morning, he is like this, no matter how he was the night before: sometimes he'll have had another attack, another bad spell, occassionally he would go without any sleep at all ... yet when he wakes, he is always happy.

He believes in the newness of everyday.

Does it matter that he cannot talk very well, that his speech is garbled? He has not gone beyond the elementary level, though he likes flipping through old magazines, pausing every now and then to look at pictures of pretty girls and shiny cars. He will not graduate from a prestigious university, or any university for that matter, which means that he will never go on to amend laws or save lives on the operating table.

He does not know what it means to betray a friend, to hurt a lover out of malice and spite, nor will it ever occur to him to spread lies and slander about another only to further his own interests.

He laughs as though he has never known pain, though he has gone through more than his fair share of that.

He is 16 years old.

I like to think that I became a writer because I have this one great story to tell, and that story is about him.