The bathroom is a weird place to think about your brother.
And yet, that's the place mine comes to mind.
Whether it was toting me around with him in the truck to SNAC with the teens after church on Sunday or letting me pal around at Sharpe's while he was working or showing up on Valentine's day with a flower even though he worked ridiculous hours or sneaking me some cash before I left for Belfast or giving me a car for my 16th birthday, my big brother has taken care of me for as long as I can remember.
Maybe it's because he is 14 years older than me, but he's just always taken special care to show not tell love.
I have a different relationship with each of my brothers.
The youngest one and I have always been the most tumultuous, as he went from tormentor to best friend to the adult constantly trying to mentor me. The last part is what turned me back into my original relationship role of thorn-in-side sister. I like to think of myself as the one designed to keep him humble and mindful of his humanity.
It's hard to keep super close to a sibling who lives very far away, but the middle brother and I always enjoy one another. He's got a big, booming personality that keeps people from realizing how soft and squishy he is on the inside.
The oldest is the one I always find myself being the most gentle near, perhaps because he's always been the "safe place."
But growing up is hard. Jobs in different states and a year overseas can't help but make me feel distant. Marriages, babies, preoccupation. The closeness between siblings looks different over time.
Then, two months into my engagement to my husband, we bought Cliffhouse, which turned into a renovation project I honestly just did not anticipate.
It was through this project that I was punched in the chest of what adult sibling and family love looks like.
Weekend after weekend, parents on both sides, friends, and two of my brothers and their families showed up.
We tore up floors, tore down walls, painted, cleaned, disinfected.
At the heart of it all was the bathroom.
We used to call it the hobbit hole; the door wasn't 6 feet tall.
The floor sloped in.
The floor was covered in a strange purple-ish concrete.
The vanity was starting to rot and was covered in mold.
The window was rotting.
The shower head came to my chest.
The door hit the toilet.
Yes, my love for this house was clearly blinding.
And yes, I did intend to leave it like that.
Until Jacob.
I don't know if it was the third or fourth time he smacked his face against the door, but next thing I knew, he was up in my attic inspecting the capacity for expansion.
Exploration turned into confirmation which turned into tearing off the concrete of the floor which turned into a flurry of destruction and revolution.
Firemen took care of removing/replacing my failing floor (without telling me) and moving my toilet (without telling me) to prevent the door situation.
But other than that, my brother became a monster of help and my brothers and parents decided they would gift the project to me as a wedding gift, footing the bill for materials. It was Jacob (and sometimes his sweet neighbor Mike) who were the hands and feet of the labor.
Soon, it wasn't just weekends but each day after work that I would find his big silver truck sitting outside my new house.
That in itself is impressive. The insanity comes if you know about the normalcy of him working 80 hour weeks, waking up at 4 or 5 to get to work early enough to work a full day then drive to Arkansas and work until 10pm or later.
The vanity was torn out, the walls were torn down, the window was removed, the shower was raised, the rotten studs were removed, new studs were built, the roof was raised, the drywall was replaced, the tiles were cut/placed/grouted, the new vanity was purchased and installed, the new mirror was installed, and the window was replaced by one custom made by Jacob.
Each inch of the massive project of that little room is constructed with love.
I was 24 years old, financial independent, steadily employed, and had both my bachelor's and my master's degrees in a 4 year span of time by the time I was 22.
It sounds terrible to say, but I have a point: my family knew I was okay.
They would have taken care of me absolutely if I had been in dire straits, but I was stable and okay.
That's what made the care feel so particularly overwhelming.
Love isn't just reaching out when you know someone needs to be loved.
Love is overflow. It's replacing floors. It's renovating a bathroom. It's showing up when it's inconvenient--so inconvenient--because you want to take care of your daughter, your little sister; you want to, once again, help her transition into yet another new chapter.
When I walk through the rooms of my home, I see the love of my family.
In the sunroom, I see the dresser that once sat in Jacob's room I would raid every morning for snuggles.
In the den, I see the peach couches that sat in my parent's house until this point, I see the television we couldn't have afforded given to us from Jonathan's home, the circuit board my parents-in-law painstakingly traced the brakers of, the laundry machines they gifted us, and the soft, sweet carpet my parents got to replace the rotted predecessor.
In the garage, I see the cabinets my father cleaned the inches of poo out of (a task he's particularly proud of).
In the kitchen, I see the walls my daddy chipped and chipped and chipped the layers of wallpaper off, the floors that are clean and new, the tile my mom learned how to place and replace, the light my dad and brother replaced, and the sink sprayer we were told would never work but magically the boys brought back to life.
In the front room, I see high, lovely curtains with their rods hung by my mother on walls newly painted by my parents, the big chair passed from Jacob to Joey to Jon to me, the couch given to us by Jon again.
The guest room is a testament to mom's ability to paint color-match and wall patch after the house-raising cracked things up and the bed given to us by my grandmother.
Our bedroom with its wall repairs as well and the bed gifted from the other set of grandparents.
And, at the middle of everything, the bathroom.
I don't get to see my family nearly as much as I used to or would like to, but I do come home each evening. And it's hard to feel distant when each room is intrinsically infused with love.
