"I'm already a brother..."

Tom Hanks in "You've Got Mail"...his Aunt Annabelle is the little girl on the left...all part and parcel of a modern family......

So we were reading Henry one of the few new sibling books we've picked up that we actually like, and I said something flip like, "Do you think you'll like being a brother?" And Henry said: "I'm already a brother."

I don't know if he meant that he already felt like one, because he's known about his little brother for awhile, or if he was referring to the fact that he has three older half-siblings. I should have asked him. But I was too taken aback.

Conscious as we try to be about the nuances of what Tom Hanks, in "You've Got Mail," referred to as "a modern family" (Tom Hanks has an elementary school aged brother and aunt in that movie, thanks to re-marriages by his father and grandfather) it's so easy to flub it. "Ack," I thought, "I should have made sure to say BIG BROTHER."

I felt terrible. We refer to Henry's older siblings as his brothers and sister all the time...so that he understands his relationship to them. But the fact is, as much as I presume to know about siblings, via having pondered my loss for what feels like forever, half-siblings, and those divided by many years, is a realm I know nothing about.

I have a feeling I'll be learning a lot when the new guy arrives--imminently--from both the younger and older Raeburns.