He Shows Up

What a Football Rivalry, Five Marathon Miles, and a Quiet Drive Reminded Me About My Brother

The older I get, the more I realize it’s not about who talks the loudest.

It’s about who stays when it gets quiet.

Who keeps showing up when it would’ve been easier to walk away.

No parades. No Instagram posts. No heroic speeches.

Just every mile, every mess, every moment that mattered—until you can’t imagine your story without them in it.

Until you realize you were never standing alone.

My brother is three and a half years younger than I am,

but in many ways, he’s always felt older — calm, confident, and composed.

There’s a quiet confidence about him that people are drawn to.

He’s smart — deeply smart — and athletic in that effortless way that makes you both proud and a little annoyed.

We weren’t especially close as kids, but we had a lot of fun.

Farm chores. Backyard games. The occasional argument over who got the front seat or the better dessert slice. You know — normal stuff.

We grew up on a farm —the kind of place where dirt lived under your nails, and chores came before cartoons.

And there was a definite, unspoken rule that you worked until the job was done.

Our parents taught us to work hard and take pride in a job well done.

Blisters and sweat meant something.

But don’t get me wrong — we laughed, we goofed off, and somehow managed to have fun right in the middle of it all.

We had our own inside jokes, our own lines drawn in the sand.

He had one downfall, though — he was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Which meant, by default, I became a Cleveland Browns fan.

When he cheered for the Steelers, I cheered for the opposite.

Out of pure sibling rivalry, sure.

But also loyalty — because that’s what siblings do.

They stand on opposite sides of the living room and still have each other’s backs.

Somewhere along the line, the rivalry stuck.

I’m still a Browns fan.

What that’s meant for me is decades of heartbreak and disappointment —which, as any Browns fan will tell you, is basically the team motto.

That’s what siblings do sometimes.

They push against you, shape you, even if you don’t realize it at the time.

And here’s the thing — even when life took us in different directions,

he kept showing up.

He was there when I got married.

He was there when I got divorced.

He was there when I raised my kids, always showing up in the background — steady, present, never loud but always there.

When I ran my marathon, his whole family came to cheer me on.

At around mile 15, I hit a wall. He could see it.

He hadn’t planned to run a single step.

But he did.

He ran and walked by my side for five miles — until I got close enough to the finish line to know I could make it.

And then he was right there at the end, cheering.

He didn’t have to do it.

He just did.

He stood on the sidelines and cheered for my boys, too —just as loudly as I did.

Because that’s what he does.

He shows up.

But life shifts.

We each had kids, careers, new cities, new rhythms.

Somewhere along the way, the string stretched thin between us.

And tonight, on this quiet drive home, it stings more than I want to admit.

He doesn’t just know me —he remembers me.

He remembers the bad hair, the dumb choices, and the years I tried to act like I had it all figured out.

He watched me become who I am today — the tired, loyal mom and grandma who still roots for the underdog and texts too many exclamation points.

Because if you’re lucky, your sibling remembers the whole messy, beautiful, complicated version of you.

He does.

I don’t know what that’s worth these days.

But tonight — it feels like everything.

📌 Quote of the Day

“He shows up. And sometimes, that’s everything.”

ction

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