Yesterday was my birthday. It was genuinely perfect and everything I could ask for. My boyfriend made me a cake, my friends got me extremely thoughtful and adorable gifts, Tony made us all homemade bagels, everyone sat through 12 Kate Trivia questions, I got drunk, I kissed people that I love, and had a delightful time.
This morning as the sun bled through my bedroom window, I pulled out my phone and sent my brother a group picture from my party last night and followed it up with “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!”
I’ve always shared a birthday with my brother. The year I turned one, he was born the very next day. And while technically I spent one year as an only child before he showed up, I don’t remember a life without him.
Some kids might have resented having birthdays so close together, like having a birthday right around Christmas, but I loved sharing birthdays. Having two full days of festivities and present opening was the best, and as children my brother was quite literally my best friend.
We did almost everything together. Sledding in the backyard, wearing dad’s shirts and laughing at the way they went down past our knees, musicals, collecting Pokemon cards, playing Super Smash Brothers on the N64. We even worked at McDonald’s together as teenagers and griped about the managers to each other.
Our Mormon missions also overlapped. Many times in my apartment, I would spread my hand across a world map, with my thumb touching Rosario, Argentina and my pinky stretching towards my hometown. I could never reach it. But Osorno, Chile was never out of reach. We were in it together. This strengthened me.
Being the oldest of seven kids, I never could have predicted that as an adult, I would find myself as an only child again. The only child who had left the Church. The only child who had slipped off of “the straight and narrow.” The only child subjected to rumors and ridicule for having left the faith.
It was one of the loneliest periods of my life. I was keenly aware that I had disappointed my brother with my leaving, though he never said it. How could he not be disappointed? A few years earlier I would have felt the same way. And from having spent our whole lives together, I knew my brother. He was like me: stalwart, believing, worried for my eternal salvation. He was going to live and die in that Church, of that I was absolutely certain.
My brother never directly confronted me about leaving or made judgmental comments to me, for which I have always been incredibly grateful. But rather than stick around the family members who did resent me for leaving, I built my own life and found family. I resigned myself to the idea that I would always be the lone black sheep. My family could not see me as anything more than a lost cause and horrifically broken for leaving the Church. It hurt, but it was a truth I needed to learn to live with.
In Christmas of 2022, my brother and I sat across from each other at the McDonald’s we worked in as teenagers, drinking the frappuccinos we had never been allowed to try, as he shared personal details about his journey out of the Church.
We cried. We told each other we’d missed each other. And while I was incredibly happy for him and his personal growth, I was also overwhelmed with relief for myself.
There were now two of us.
As he ages, Dallin will be remembered by many people for a hundred different things. His good nature, his sense of humor, his intelligence, his academic and career achievements, his approach to fatherhood, and his enthusiasm for life.
But to me, Dallin will always be the reason I’m not an only child.
