At first, he was an invisible beast that drove mom crazy. I remember seeing mom struggle with nausea for about 2 weeks straight, completely bedridden. I had never seen her in so much pain.

Then, he was a strange, Goblin-looking thing that appeared at home out of thin air. If I thought he was devilish during mom’s pregnancy, I was mistaken. Compared to the monster he became coming out of mom’s tummy, fetus Kien was a true little angel.

For the first two years of his life, he did nothing but crying and puking. In mom’s words: “When he’s hungry, he cries. Sleepy, he cries. Bored, he cries. Scared, he cries. Then he pukes cause he cries so much.”

Never mind his cute whenever he was asleep, the only time I found him bearable.

Then, he was the first member of Linh’s Disney Channel Fan Club and Linh’s Kitchen Lab. I remember us being eleven and three, laughing our lungs off at some cartoons while eating some horrible potatoes that he happily swallowed, only because I made them. That kid would eat anything I fed.

Then he was four, chubby and cute, always properly-dressed but with teeth the color of chessboards. Apparently, one of the reasons he was crying so much as a baby was because of his asthma, which made it difficult for him to breathe. His teeth turned black due to the early over-exposure to antibiotics. For a kid that hated uneven socks, ruffled shirts, bad color-matches, having half-black teeth was a nightmare. So he used his finger to cover them up whenever he smiled for a picture, which always cracked me up.

Then he was going to school. I remember crossing the street with him on his way to class, positioning myself closer to the waves of traffic. “Why do you always have to do that?” he would ask. “So that I’d die first. I will have to anyway.” I said.

The first time we talked about death, I explained to him that mom will die, dad will too, and so will we – it’s inevitable. His little brain barely fathomed the fact, and tears started running down his bottom eyelashes. Quickly, I cooked some sausage, tofu and put them on a stick with cherry tomatoes to cheer him up. He instantly forgot what we were talking about.

Then he sometimes went with me to school. I used to bike home with three guys who were my close friends during seventh grade. Kien was still little and fitted perfectly on the back of my bike. He didn’t know how to bike until he was twelve!

One day, he interupted me and the other three guys mid-conversation: “Chị Linh, why do you have so much hair in your *censored word*?”

His words hung in the air like dead cockroaches’ scent mid-summer. We pretended nothing happened and proceeded our awkward bike rides home, for at least a few more days. I saw the guys’ giggles through the corner of my eyes and wanted to kill my brother for real for the first time.

Then I was going to school abroad, in a place so far way that Kien had to learn things like “how to start a facebook account”. The day I left for school, he thought it was a prank I guess, for he wasn’t at all as sad as I was.

I went home that summer with a boyfriend, my first love. He surely knew how to hang out with Kien: they played Playstation together and watched Terminator movies; he even picked Kien up from the swimming classes on our little scooter.

Whenever we kissed, Kien would interrupt. We lied down on the same bed, Kien was in the middle. We held hands in the movies theature behind his back. I’m sure Kien pretended not to know.

When my boyfriend returned home, all I did for the rest of summer was skyping with him, making anniversary and birthday gifts for him, longing him. Little brother was the last thing on my mind during the first summer away from my first love.

Then I went off to school again when summer ended, and Kien cried this time. I heard that he would cry for the next two weeks after I had settled down at school already. He even started reading my favorite manga Glass Mask. It’s a shoujo, aka comics for girls.

Looking back at summer pictures, I realized how his shoulders were a bit broader, his frame a bit bigger, his legs a bit longer. In a matter of a few months, little brother had grown up! The thought of Kien through puberty was so foreign to me – it took me a while to realize that he would no longer stay that chubby, half-blacked teeth kid forever. Someday he would grow up having a girlfriend too, even. I hate missing out on my own brother’s growing up.

That summer, I couldn’t return home. I sent home an ipod as a congratulatory gift for Kien: he had received gold medals for swimming contest. It was his first Apple possession and still his proudest, to this day.

Then I finally returned home when Kien was as old as me when I left, i.e. grown-up, but not really. His mind is still simplistic and his demeanor is still foolish as ever.

But whenever we cross the streets now, he’s the one getting closer to the waves of traffic, simply because “I’m a man.” When we go to restaurants, or shops, he remembers to open the door for me and people will assume that we are a young couple or he is the older brother. He is my designated driver, direction-finder, travel companion for most road trips.

Just yesterday, I talked with him for the first time about the absolute necessity of knowledge like “how to put on a condom” (he knows nothing about it at age 17!) He contributed to my wedding plan. (duh- every girl has a wedding plan!)

Mom and dad always ask, jokingly: “If we were ever parted, whose side would you choose? Mom’s? Dad’s?”

To which, Kien and I always answer: “Neither. We will be fine on our own, together.”

September 2015, one year before Kien probably leaves for another country to go to college.