My Brother: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

His name is Hamilton. Known as Ham to his friends, and Hammie to me. He is exactly 22 months younger than me. He weighed 10 pounds, 4 ounces when he was born. He's the love of my life, and God to my mother. All the trouble he caused growing up is irrelevant compared to the upstanding man he has become. He'll always be my "lil brother" even though he's about 6 inches taller than me and built like a fucking bull. He carries all of the traits of a Papili man - short legs, long torso, giant paws for hands, a perfectly straight hairline with a gorgeous, thick, dark, full head of hair. He's got a shoulder span of about 54 inches and his waist might be 38 or 40 inches at the most.

Hammie as an infant and me hanging with him in my beach chair.






I was potty trained by the time Hammie was baptised, which happened to be on my 2nd birthday. The boy could beat the shit out of me by the time he was 3 years old. One Christmas, as my dad had the video camera rolling, Hammie shoved me and I fell back into all of our new toys and right on my ass. I immediately starting wailing and you can hear my mom in the background telling him to apologize. "Sah-ry." Yeah, we had all of our toys taken away from us before 8 am on Christmas Day that year. And the family still laughs about it. Him and I fought like cats and dogs. And that is an understatement. My PopPop called us Poison and Ivy because not only did we argue but we would hit, punch, and kick each other too. We had that special brother-sister bond.

He was so damn chunky as a baby that he learned to roll instead of crawl. Everyone fell in love with him the instant they laid eyes on him. As he grew up no one could figure out which member of the family he looked like, which was weird for us because my cousin looked exactly like both of her parents and I am a carbon copy of my mother. But he's Hamilton, and no one else. Damn, was he ornery when he little. He gave the women in my family a run for their money. Everyone had a part in trying to discipline him, because that's how our family rolls. My parents had a wooden paddle they kept hidden from us, that only came out when we were really bad. It never came out for me! It finally broke one day from being used so much on Hamilton, but did that end it's (or my brother's) reign of terror? No, my parents duct taped it. One day he told one of our aunts to Shut Up. That's a mortal sin, especially when you're four years old. He never did that again. I remember Mom chasing him around the house because of him running his mouth, and chasing him pissed her off even more. Once he surpassed my dad in height and weight, Pop kind of backed off a little. But my mother was never scared of him.


Yes, this adorable little boy had a mouth on him that was ALWAYS getting him into trouble!


He went through the awkward stage just like I did, but not to the same extreme. He had a mullet and was as round as he was tall for about 2 years! Him and I joke with our mom that there was a time when it wasn't looking too pretty for either of us, but we paid our dues and "Look at us now bitches!"



One thing I love about my relationship with my brother is the affinity we both share for music. He started playing guitar when he was 11, following in our father's footsteps. I constantly gush over his talent, but he is so humble about it. A favorite childhood memory of mine is the Saturday mornings he and I would spend playing my parents' albums on our old record player, which inevitably would wake up our parents, and they were always none too pleased. How many kids rock out to their mom's Meatloaf: Bat Out Of Hell album? We knew all the words to Paradise By The Dashboard Light before we were old enough to even understand what the song was about. Our usual rotation consisted of all the Beatles albums, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Boston, Styx and Meatloaf. And a little WHAM! thrown in for guilty pleasure. Hamilton managed to turn me on to John Mayer despite the fact that I boycotted him for so long. He dragged me to a concert a couple of years ago, and once I got past all the screaming teenyboppers, I was in awe.

We celebrate our birthdays every summer (he's June 3rd, I'm August 3rd) by going to see 311 because when the summer tour stops in Philadelphia, the date is always between the two. He's a good guy to have with me in a big crowd. He'll put me on one shoulder - just one, because the other one has the tendons in it bolted to his collarbone - to snap pictures. When it's time for 311 to take the stage we always turn to each other and scream like little schoolgirls. He's the only person I will let take me up front at a concert. "You ready?" He puts one arm around me and I put both of my arms around him and just hold on for dear life because it's kind of like being behind a giant snowplow. He somehow manages to get us right up to the barricade every time, and if anyone near us gets out of line and starts say, elbowing me in the chest, he steps in and basically scares the living shit out of the guy who decided to act like an asshole. If a crowdsurfer comes our way he yells "Incoming!" and I know to duck and cover while he passes them off to security over the barricade. I also appreciate the fact that no matter how drenched in sweat he is, he keeps his shirt on. Nothing grosses me out more than big, shirtless, sweaty guys that I don't know smashing up against me at shows. But I will most certainly cling to Hamilton and endure the fact that he's soaking wet because number one, I don't want to get squashed like a bug, and number two, he's my brother.Hammie and I in the crowd at the 311 show in June of 2009

When we were younger I was the one with the book smarts and he was the athlete with a little more common sense. I excelled at school, he excelled at any sport he tried. Baseball, football, soccer, swimming, and wrestling, he wasn't afraid to try anything. But with his rough & tumble attitude came several broken bones, stitches, and even dislocated shoulder tendons his senior year as captain of the wrestling team. He gave my mom a lot of gray hair during his high school years. He never really came off as a typical jock, one of those tools you see walking around with their heads up their ass; he was a much more complex creature. I will never forget a conversation we had one day and he told me, "I don't want my life to end up being a mark just taking up space."

He met his future wife when he was a junior, and looking a hot mess due to losing almost 30 pounds in less than a month for wrestling. When he and Ashley started dating, he was slowly becoming a changed boy. (He wasn't quite a man yet...) They were perfect for each other at the time. I don't remember why, but they decided to split up when he was a freshman in college. His whole demeanor had changed. He became bitter, nearly impossible to talk to, and volatile. He was living away from home at the time, which was for the best because we probably would have killed each other. There were a few instances where I thought he and my boyfriend were going to kill each other. All I remember was one time I threw a bowl of cereal at him for some stupid reason and the next thing I know he slammed me up against the back door with his hands around my throat. (I was 21, he was 19.) My boyfriend walked in through the garage door and saw what was happening...needless to say my poor mother had to get in between them to prevent them from beating the shit out of each other. It was a dark time for all of us because MomMom had just been diagnosed with cancer and we were all on edge. Whether Hamilton knew it or not, being apart from Ashley was eating away at him on the inside as well.

He went through a tough time in his late teens and early twenties. He was trying so hard to be a good person but the rage he felt inside sometimes kept him from achieving that. His rage stemmed from the demise of our parents' marriage, losing our MomMom, and not having the woman he loved by his side. He and I definitely were holding each other up during those storms. After our MomMom's funeral in November of 2004, several people came up to us and pointed out that some time during the service, I had laid my head on Hamilton's shoulder and he put his arm around me; if there had been any dry eyes in the church up until that simple act of love and support, there weren't anymore. That's another memory that will always stick with me. In January of 2005, when he was 20, our next door neighbor had a heart attack in his garage as he was getting ready to snowplow his driveway. His wife had called 911, then the phone rang at our house. Karen was screaming and crying so much that my mother couldn't figure out what was going on, but Hamilton knew without even picking up on the phone that it was Karen and something was horribly wrong. I was at my boyfriend's apartment when we recieved the phone call and rushed back to my house. Kenny and Karen's two little girls were there. Hammie had immediately dragged them over in the snow so they wouldn't be exposed to the chaos that ensued as their daddy was lying unresponsive on the garage floor. My brother did everything he could. He gave Kenny CPR until the ambulance arrived, but the doctors said that he was most likely gone before he hit the floor. I will never forget the night of his viewing. After my family had gotten home, Hammie disappeared into the dining room, where he sat sobbing uncontrollably. He did not want to believe that Kenny was gone. He kept saying, "But I gave him the breath of life! Why couldn't I save him?" All my parents and I could do was hold him. Such powerful words coming from a young man, and an experience I would not wish on anyone. He was a wreck for a long time.

Soon after that, he started to go over Charles and Trina's house once a week for dinner. They were an older couple that used to go to our church, and they embody every that is good and spiritual. Plus they watched Hammie and I grow up. It was the time spent with them that helped Hammie get his emotions in check, and they were people he could talk to about what was going with him. It took time, but he did a 180 and the change was utterly evident. He and Ashley started dating again, and he matured considerably. A year after they got back together, he asked Ashley to marry him. He had just turned 22. We were all a little surprised when he told us his plan to ask for her hand in marriage, being that he was still so young. But we all knew Ashley was the one for him. We love her dearly and she is an awesome young woman.

Now even though my brother is such a great person, and any father would be lucky to have him as a son-in-law, he was SCARED TO DEATH to ask Ashley's father permission to marry her. Hamilton is very old-school that way. It was so cute to listen to him talk about how nervous he was to talk to Ashley's father. Needless to say, it went well, because they've been married for a year and half now. When he went ring shopping, our mom and one of aunts went with him, and of course my aunt took pictures. The beads of sweat standing out on his forehead as he signed the papers are definitely noticable when we look back at those pictures! It was a Sunday afternoon in September when he asked Ashley to marry him, exactly one year after they got back together. The Eagles were playing, and he could not stop pacing. He had my mom take Ashley shopping because he was too nervous having her around, and he planned to ask her when the game was over. All of our family and friends knew about the surprise and they were all poised, waiting for the phone call, so they could come over and celebrate with us. He took Ashley into our sunroom and presented her with a gift - a plaque for her desk at school (she's a teacher) that says "Mrs. Evans." In typical Ashley fashion, she didn't get it. Then he got down on one knee and proposed. At first she thought he was joking. Oh no, he was for real. Literally five minutes after he proposed, our house was FILLED with people. My family, Ashley's family, and tons of friends. Out came enough food to feed an army and champagne. It happened so fast that to this day it still amazes me.
Ashley was so overwhelmed, but God love her she took it all in stride. Everyone knew from day one when Hamilton had decided to ask her to marry him, and we all had to keep it from Ashley for a few months, which was torture! He did an excellent job though, because Ashley had absolutely no idea. The whole family was buzzed with excitement from that day on until the wedding, which, I have to say, was the most elegant, perfect, and rockin' wedding I have ever been a part of. Of course it was, because it was the celebration of two people I love with all my heart joining together in marriage.

During the years since that day in September of 2006, I have watched Hamilton morph into a young man that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers would be so very proud of. He manages to keep a somewhat normal relationship with our father, even after all the grief and turmoil he has caused this family, he holds our mother on the highest pedestal imaginable, as well as Ashley, and he looks out for me and does everything in his power to protect me from shitheads that he knows are no good for me. He of course is still a typical boy that will try to gross you out with his farts and come out of the bathroom saying "Whew! You shoulda seen the size of THAT one!" He does a damn good job of being the life of the party as well, whether it's ordering up shots of Sambuca for everyone or busting out The Worm on the dance floor at weddings, which is so fucking hilarious you'd have to see it with your own eyes, this giant moose pulling off a move that not many people can do. The family can sit by the pool and watch him go off the diving board for hours, never failing to be amazed at the grace with which the bull does flips, backflips, swan dives, and anything else he can think of into the pool. But always beware if you're standing by the pool fully clothed, because chances are he will sneak up behind you, pick you up as if you weigh nothing, and toss your ass right in. I know this because I speak from years of experience.

When Hammie became an apprentice in the Plumbing & Pipefitting local, our mom gave him the Carhart vest that was our PopPop's, which has "Pip" embroidered on the chest. There's men in the local who were apprentices when our PopPop was a mechanic, and when word got around that Hamilton is Pip's grandson, he was instantly famous. The day before the rehearsal dinner for his wedding, Hamilton got a call from his foreman to get into the work trailer. Thinking he was in trouble, he walked in, and standing there were a few guys, all of whom had known PopPop. The foreman pulled a bottle of Sambuca out of the freezer and said to Hamilton, "If your grandfather were still with us, he would be doing this," and poured shots for everyone. Later he told me that it took everything in him not to cry, and when he told me the story, I did cry.

And now Hammie has just entered the next stage of his life. On October 27th, at 2:22 PM, he became the daddy of a precious little angel whom he and Ashley named Nicholas Serafino. It's crazy to think of Hammie as a father still, but he will ease into the role, just as he did when he became a husband. I know he will be a wonderful father to my nephew.

It has really been amazing watching Hammie grow up, from an adorable, fat little baby to an awkward, fat little middle schooler to a devastingly handsome young man. What amazes me the most is the changes on the inside of him that I witnessed through the years. We still bicker and argue like little kids, but the bottom line is that I would do anything for that boy. And I know he would do anything for me. He is an old soul in a young man's body. Whenever I talk about him, I always say that he is the last of his kind. I can also say with absolute confidence that there is nothing in this world that can break the bond we share. We've been through hell and back, the whole time standing side by side. He is and always will be the only man in my life that I know will never let me down.