Hi world! Chris here. Today is a special day and it just so happened to line up with my posting schedule! That’s right, it’s my big brother’s birthday. Yayyyy! Sadly, I won’t get to see him today because he is still deployed with the army, but that doesn’t mean I can’t dedicate this post to him.

I wrote this piece for a nonfiction creative writing class and even though I don’t really like nonfiction, I actually like this piece. I hope you feel the same. I don’t think you’ll need any tissues although it did make my mom cry. Just wanted to give you fair warning before we dive in!

Two brothers stumbled into their hotel room, both of them dirty, tired, and half-past dead. The younger one tried to talk, to explain how he felt about what they just saw, but the older one raised his hand to cut him off. No chick flick moments. They weren’t half-way through the first episode of Supernatural, but the Winchester brothers had already stated their opinion on talking: Save it for what matters.

Fourteen years in the future and two different siblings had the same rule in their minds as they stumbled onto the curbside by the Texas airport. It was the last time I saw my brother before he left for his deployment. Jacob was at the end of his leave, still dressed like a civilian even though he was already a soldier at heart. My mother clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her on her feet. My father struggled to let go as he clasped Jacob’s hand. I was almost surprised I managed to get a hug in also.

“I’m gonna miss you. Be safe,” I told him, arms fully wrapped around his neck. I’d usually have to stand on my tip toes to reach, but this time Jacob picked me up as he reciprocated the hug.

“It’s okay,” he replied, letting go as he spoke.

It lasted for less than a minute and suddenly he was gone. My own older brother and my own Dean Winchester. Maybe he didn’t ride off in an Impala blaring classic rock and wearing a leather jacket, but he’d given me his own version of the older brother’s line. “It’s okay,” he’d said, not letting me go on when I could’ve recited lines on how worried I was for him and how much he means to me and the family. He cut me off instead, making me the Sam Winchester in our lives.

Of course, there are some glaring differences between the six-foot four genius younger brother and me, the five-foot five sometimes considered smart younger sister, but there are some similarities too. With a father that spent his days hunting down supernatural monsters throughout America and no mother that was still alive, Sam relied on his big brother to take care of him growing up. It was Dean that Sam went to for comfort when he first discovered the things his dad was after and it was Dean that sat on his bed until he went to sleep so that Sam would feel safe. When Sam was bullied in school, it wasn’t his dad, but it was Dean that offered physical and verbal help to either protect little Sam or teach him how to protect himself. Dean was his brother’s hero just like Jacob was mine.

When I was six years old, I tried to keep up with my teenage sister and her friend as they played in the woods behind our house. It was a game of war and they went all-in running and jumping over fallen branches and crawling under bushes. Try as I might, I was just too small to make it over the same obstacles they could freely leap over and tangles of bushes caught my hair and made it hard to move. There was no catching up to the other girls until Jacob entered the picture.

Only three years younger than the others, Jacob was already bigger than all of us combined so he kept up with the game just fine. He could’ve been the winner if he wanted, but something kept him back. Something covered in bruises and scrapes, crying because she just wanted to play with her big sister, but she couldn’t. Something called me.

“It’s okay,” he said, holding my hand to help me over the fallen trees. Instead of making me crawl through the bushes like the other girls had, he pushed them back with his arms so I could walk through. Completely alone now that the game had carried on without us, Jacob even gave up his role and walked me back to the house, helping me back over the same obstacles we had just tackled all over again.

Months later, the same group of kids played in a popular fishing stream the local farmers like to visit. We had it to ourselves that afternoon as we jumped from rock to rock, trying to make the water splash on each other. My sister’s friend landed on a rock and knocked it loose from the sand, disturbing a snake that had been hiding from all our noise underneath. It slithered on top of the water and sent everyone running for dry ground, everyone but little me that couldn’t make the jump from my rock to the shore without landing in the water where the snake had disappeared.

My sister screamed at me to move and of course I started crying again. I was terrified of snakes and there was no way I was risking landing right on top of one when my sister swore she saw diamonds down its back. She and her friend stood a safe distance away, equally scared of the serpent in the water. Jacob stood at the water’s edge and stretched out his hand towards me.

“It’s okay,” he said as I stretched my arm out to reach him.

With a solid grasp on my hand, Jacob jerked me off my rock and onto the shore so we could both run away from the water. I was still too small to keep up with their longer legs, so Jacob didn’t let go of my hand but used it to pull me along and make sure I was safe.

It’s been more times than I can count that Jacob has swooped in to play the big brother and bring both of us home dirty, tired, and half-past dead. And no matter how many times it’s happened, I know I’ve thanked him for it even less. Without getting more than a few words in I’m always bound to get the Winchester rule of no chick flick moments said in the words of “it’s okay.” For Sam, this initiated a smile and a brotherly response.

Alright jerk, he said.

Bitch, Dean replied, ending the conversation his brother tried to start only for them to return to the moment over and over again throughout the fifteen seasons of Supernatural. In that first episode, neither of the brothers really needed to say anything more. They had just risked their lives together; they knew they meant something to each other. What good would it do to ruin that with words?

It was enough that they were talking face to face, not calling on the phone, or bound behind the dash of their 1967 Chevy Impala. Nobody had to check the road or run off to rescue their dad on one of his hunts. They got to stand and face of each other and sometimes that can say more than speaking.

When I told my brother goodbye, I wanted to say a lot of things. I wanted to thank him for carrying me through the cornfield when I was scared of getting lost and driving me to school when he got his license. I wanted to apologize for skipping his high school football games and always being the bratty younger sister. I wanted him to know that I only watched Supernatural because he was the one that showed it to me. I wanted him to know that he was my Dean Winchester and I was so proud to be his Sam.

But I didn’t get to say anything that I wanted. I had no time to go beyond a hug and some mumbled words that could’ve been used by anyone. I didn’t even have time to cry. Instead, we barely got to share a smile as we let go and Jacob went back to comfort Mom before he was gone. Somehow, with Jacob’s words of wisdom, it was still enough.

We’ve spent twenty years surviving together, escaping our own versions of Sam and Dean’s troubles. Of course we knew exactly what we meant to each other. I didn’t need to tell him you’re my brother and I’d die for you for him to know that I was his Sam. He already knew because he was already Dean. There was nothing we could say to make it more real than it already was. We didn’t need a chick flick moment to find that out, we just needed our own line. “It’s okay,” he said, and it was. Because we got to be there, and we got to hug. We got to stand and face each other and sometimes that can say more than speaking.

If you made it this far in the post make sure you leave a like for Jacob’s birthday. He deserves a lot more, but given the whole deployment thing, this is the best I can do.

Hope y’all are staying safe out there. I’ll try to get another post up next week, but that’s when finals start so I’ll have to see what free time I’ll have.

Until then, keep social distancing!