I have two wonderful big brothers I’ve known only since 2005, one of whom passed away just a few years later. They’re two of my three full-blooded biological siblings.
But I have another big brother I’ve known my whole life, and he’s pretty darn amazing too. Most of you who grew up with me know him – he’s Isaac, better known as Ike or Ikeman.
And guess what? Ikeman is 65 years old as of Thursday (8/22/24)!!! So happy birthday to a great guy who’s an incredible dad, husband, son, uncle – and brother.
He probably doesn’t know how much I love him. One thing I know is that we don’t see each other nearly enough. My family’s in Dallas-Fort Worth, while his is in the Houston area where we grew up.
Isaac and I couldn’t be more different. Sure, we look nothing alike because we were adopted 18 months apart from different mothers in Huntington, West Virginia. (That part about us being adopted? We didn’t find out until I was in college at Texas A&M in the early 1980s.)
But the blindingly stark contrast extends to just about every aspect of our being – our personalities, our interests (we do both love sports and the Astros!), our politics, the stuff we enjoy doing. Really, in just about every way you can think of, we’re opposites to the max. We’re like salt and sugar (hmm, which one’s which?!).
As long as I can remember, Ike’s always been fun-loving and easygoing to my serious, up to my down, Garth to my Tchaikovsky. He loves to smile, laugh, have a good time, and help others around him do the same – when he’s not working his tail off for H-E-B, where he’s been a manager for over 30 years. He loves loving life, while I’m often too focused on unimportant things to enjoy the little things.
When we were kids, we played baseball and basketball on teams together in the 1970s and had a blast. Ike was a better athlete than I was, but that didn’t matter to me. I was pretty content to be average. One year before we moved to public school in Conroe, we played football at St. Matthew Lutheran School in Houston when I was in sixth grade and Ike was in seventh. I’ve always loved watching football, but I sure hated playing it that year, at summer football camp and during the fall 1971 season when I was only 10 years old – the youngest kid in sixth grade!
Being an outgoing kid, Isaac had no trouble making friends once we moved from private to public school. Being an introverted, nerdy, shy kid, I made friends with kids like me and was bullied by some of the others who clearly were insecure and had nothing better to do.
All through those years, Ike and I did our best to navigate the extremely rough waters of our home life, made so by our adoptive mother’s alcohol-fueled problems. Although we may not have been the closest siblings, I feel like we were there to support each other. It was a situation we felt pretty helpless in and knew we couldn’t do much about. So we accepted our circumstances and did our best to get through each day.
One of our escapes was going saltwater fishing with Dad in Galveston. We did that fairly often, getting up well before dawn to make the drive to the coast to fish for speckled trout and whatever else we could catch. Ike still loves to fish but I haven’t done it for years, except for the little bit we did in some nearby ponds when our kids were little.
All I know is I’m lucky to have a brother like Ike. And he’s fortunate to have the beautiful family he has – his wife Phyllis, daughters Lauren and Jennifer and all the canine kids they’ve cherished over the years.
Love you, Ikeman. Happy birthday, Brother. ❤
A Life of Words 