To my stepbrothers:

You weren't always in my life. I remember when it was just me, my sister, and my mother living in that ancient two bedroom apartment above Fairway and the Dollar Store. Then, when I had just turned five, Mama started dating someone new. He had two children, whom I met November of the same year. I found I quite liked having two brothers. By the time summer came, you all moved in -- we were a happy, if cramped, family.

And so, I grew up with you. We all shared a single room, and we made it work. We played our Nintendo together, we watched movies together, we played outside together, and we grew up together. It wasn't all fun and games- I fought with you guys, especially you, Chris. And Mike? Quite honestly, you got on my nerves more times than I could count. But we were three growing boys jammed into one bedroom, so fights were expected.

I remember our forts all around town- the one near Chris Fyvie's apartment, the one near the farmer's field, the two in the Lutheran woods. I remember trying to dam up the creek that wound through those woods, I remember the teepee we tried (and failed) to build. I remember tracking each other through the woods in the wintertime. We laughed and played and fought like brothers, not stepbrothers, because we were just that, brothers.

I also remember the games we played together. I remember renting Dark Alliance 2 from Weber's, playing long past our bedtime to try and squeeze as much game as we could from the two-day rental. I remember playing Galactic Conquest on Star Wars: Battlefront 2 for hours, and I remember when I first unlocked the Elite Rifle. We played Guitar Hero and Black Ops and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and so many others. We spent a lot of time together growing up.

When we moved, we began to grow apart. High school and friends came between us. We still had good times, though, and we were still brothers. Just the other day I went back in the woods behind our house and found the old treehouse we had built. The steps have rotted away, and the whole thing has fallen to the ground, but it's still there, rotting to nothing. The giant hole you two dug is still there, and I can still fit inside, somehow.

Those days are all done. Mike, you moved away halfway through Junior year to go live with your mom. You have a girlfriend now and an apartment, working long hours. You live far away from home, and we've rarely seen each other for two years. It's better now that I'm going to college nearby, but you're busy and I'm busy, and quite honestly, we're never going to have the relationship we used to. We're never going to be carefree, building forts together. You're learning to live in the real world, and I am too.

Chris, I don't really know what's going on with you. You're still in high school, but you moved away last summer to go live with your mom, too. I don't know how school's going for you, I don't know how you're doing. I miss you, but you're as old as I am, and you're your own person, doing your own things away from the family. We're never going to be the way we were again. I'm learning to be an adult, and I hope you are, too.

But even though the future has us going our own ways, learning to be adults and how to fit into society, I'm still going to love you. I'm still going to be here for you two as much as I can, and I know you'll do the same. We'll make new memories someday, when we all have a good grip on how to be adults, and they won't be the same as the memories we already made, but they'll be new, and they'll be good. We're growing up, but that doesn't change the past. You'll always be my brothers. Not my stepbrothers, but my brothers.