The happy father

The happy father
Originally uploaded by phinux.

This is my brother. My brother is hearing impaired. When he himself was born, he was born over a month premature, and suffered lung problems when he was young. He requires hearing-aids to hear, and he struggled throughout school, due to a learning disability that was not properly diagnosed early.

But despite his shrimpy exterior, and his difficult to understand speech, he is dear and sweet.

He is never blunt or sarcastic, and always good-humoured. He is a child at heart, but does not act childish. He is wise enough not to have made many of the same mistakes people his age would have made by now.

I know all this because I grew up with him- and although we had the usual sibling rivalries, for a very long time in our childhood we only really had each other to play with on the weekends. He stayed at the School for the Deaf during the week, and I didn't have any friends to visit me in my spare time. But through the many hours of playing G.I. Joes and Lego I learned that my brother is a person of endless imagination. He had stories to tell that he could not express through written or verbal communication, but could be acted out through the adventures of dozens of tiny characters on a tiny stage. He was as much a writer as I am, without a page to write on.

I only hope that Justin benefits as much from his humbling, abstract communication as I did.