My brother, his wife and their dog treated me to lunch in Penarth today so I'm claiming the 18th as my birthday proper this year.
It was wonderful to see them even though I refused hugs for covid reasons ("Get away from me, you're from England!").
NB the social distancing didn't apply to the dog:
As well as buying lunch my brother also apologised for a deeply hurtful thing he did to me in 2014.
I've barely spoken to him since then; I was too deeply wounded and couldn't find a way of putting how I felt into words.
The tone of the apology was about as sincere as a Tory apology; by the sound of it he wasn't entirely certain what he'd done wrong. This was probably because the mea culpa was entirely due to the machinations of his wife, a woman whose brother died in an accident in his twenties and who consequently has no time for our sibling bullshit.
We'd talked about the hurtful thing when she came to see me in the summer because she is all about love and connection and the continuing strained relationship was breaking her heart. Our discussion was the first time I'd ever managed to speak freely about it, and I'd found I was still as distraught as when it happened.
So she'd gone home and had a word, and today, after a giant prompt from the missus, he said it, he said what I've been waiting to hear all that time: I'm sorry, I was angry, I did hurtful things, I was wrong.
It came out of the blue and I was so taken aback all I could say was "Thank you."
I'll need some time to process it, I'm not sure I'll ever really trust him again no matter what he says, but bloody hell, what a birthday present.
Today's Photo: Loved Ones
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