Brothers and Sisters

If you asked me as a little boy how many brothers and sisters I had, I’m not sure what answer I would have given you.

The simple answer would have been two. Robert and David. They were the ones there.

Robert was about three months older than me, which basically made us the same age, and David was two years younger.

On paper, Robert was my stepbrother and David was my biological brother.

But I don’t remember thinking about any of that. We were just brothers.

The Three of Us

Growing up in the mountains, there weren’t neighborhood kids living next door or friends waiting down the street.

Most days, our world was the cabin, the mountains, and the three of us.

So we made our own fun.

We had normal toys. Tonka trucks were around, and David always seemed to have a bunch of Matchbox cars and trucks.

But when your backyard is a mountain, you don’t need much of a racetrack.

We’d sit in the dirt carving little roads into the ground, digging tunnels and figuring out ways for the cars to disappear underneath one side and come out the other.

A plain patch of dirt could keep us busy for hours.

Then there were sticks. A stick was rarely just a stick. One minute it was a sword. The next it was a gun.

Give three boys enough dirt, rocks, trees, and imagination and apparently we had everything we needed.

I especially loved climbing trees.

We had one with a rope and an old tire hanging from it that became our tire swing. Another tree became one of our favorite places to hang out. We figured out how to make little steps going up the trunk and eventually had a small platform higher up.

Calling it a treehouse would probably be giving our construction skills too much credit. But it was ours.

Looking back, that’s what I remember most about those years.

We didn’t spend much time thinking about what we didn’t have.

We simply turned whatever was around us into something worth playing with.

A patch of dirt became a road.

A tree became a clubhouse.

A stick became whatever the day required.

Of course, three brothers didn’t always live in perfect harmony.

Robert had a tendency to mess with David, and somehow I often ended up in the middle.

I remember Mom telling me that David was my little brother and that when something happened between him and Robert, I needed to stick up for him. So I did.

I didn’t think of myself as a protector or mediator back then. David was my little brother, and Mom told me to look after him. That was enough.

Maybe some of the person I eventually became was being shaped in those moments.

I couldn’t have known that at the time.

Mostly, I was just trying to keep my brothers from fighting long enough for us to get back outside.

And when I think about those early years, that’s how I prefer to remember us.

Three boys with an entire mountain in front of them.

Life would eventually become more complicated, and our family would be pulled in different directions.

Those stories will have their own chapter. This one belongs to the time before that.

The Family Beyond the Mountains

Robert and David were the brothers beside me every day, but my family stretched much farther than that cabin.

Robert had a sister, Taijia, who visited from time to time. She didn’t live with us, so she came into that childhood world in smaller pieces.

Then there was my dad’s side of the family.

Every now and then, David and I would leave the mountains and go to El Paso.

My father was with Mayra. She already had a son, Pancho, and together they had Kekin, Maria, Sadie, and later Bryan and the twins, Eric and Rosa.

The visits I remember most were with Pancho, Kekin, Maria, and Sadie.

El Paso felt completely different from home.

They lived in a trailer park, and I remember Mayra keeping their home really nice. She took pride in it. Everything was cared for, and around the holidays she decorated the inside and made it feel especially warm.

When everyone was there, the house felt full.

That was probably the biggest difference.

In the mountains, David and I could step outside and see almost nobody.

In El Paso, there were kids everywhere.

There were neighbors outside, soccer games, football at the park, and stores we could walk to.

And somewhere along the way, we discovered what seemed at the time like one of mankind’s greatest inventions:

Hot Cheetos with nacho cheese poured straight into the bag.

I’m sure there are more respectable contributions to Mexican cuisine.

But as a kid, I wasn’t looking for them.

Finding Our Place

David and I stood out a little when we visited.

We were pretty white-looking kids, and neither of us spoke much Spanish.

Pancho, Kekin, Maria and Sadie were completely comfortable in that neighborhood and culture.

We weren’t. But they never made that a problem. They brought us along.

If kids were playing soccer or football, we played.

If everyone went to the park, we went.

If they walked to the store, we went with them.

What could have felt unfamiliar quickly became fun because they made sure we were included.

I didn’t think much about that as a child. I just knew I liked being there.

Years later, I understand it differently.

They made it easy for us to belong.

Mayra’s Kitchen

Some of my favorite memories from El Paso are tied to Mayra and her kitchen.

She took care of us, and she could cook.

There was always good food around, but strangely enough, one of the things I remember most wasn’t anything elaborate.

It was a tortilla.

We’d warm one directly on the stove, spread butter across it, roll it up, and eat it.

That was it. Warm tortilla. Butter. Done. And somehow it tasted incredible.

Childhood has a funny way of deciding what stays with you.

You forget entire days but remember the smell of a tortilla warming on the stove.

You remember the dirt under your hands while pushing a Matchbox car.

The tree you climbed.

A soccer game at the park.

A house decorated for Christmas.

Hot Cheetos covered in nacho cheese.

At the time, none of those things seemed important.

Now they’re some of the memories I can see most clearly.

Maybe that’s because the smallest things often carry the people with them.

A Family That Didn’t Fit Neatly on Paper

Not all of my brothers and sisters were part of my life in the same way.

Robert and David were there every day.

Taijia came through visits.

Pancho, Kekin, Maria, and Sadie were part of those El Paso years.

Bryan came into my life after I was grown, Eric and Rosa came later too. And I only had the chance to visit him once.

Some relationships had years to grow.

Others only had moments.

That’s just the truth of our family.

As I’ve gotten older, the labels have become less important to me.

Biological brother.

Half brother.

Half sister.

Stepbrother.

Stepsister.

They explain the family tree.

They don’t explain the memories.

They don’t tell you who sat beside you in the dirt.

Who you were told to look after.

Who brought you into a soccer and football games in the park.

Who welcomed you into a home that felt different from your own.

Those things can only be understood through the stories.

And mine gave me more than one version of what having brothers and sisters could look like.

There was the quiet of the mountains, where three boys made their own world.

Then there was El Paso, filled with kids, family, noise, food, and a completely different kind of belonging.

I didn’t understand any of that when I was young. I was just living it.

But I understand it now.

Family doesn’t always grow up together.

Sometimes it’s spread between different homes, different parents, different cities, and different stages of life.

What matters is that somewhere along the way, people make a place for one another.

I was fortunate enough to have more than one.

⸻

A Letter of Appreciation to My Brothers and Sisters

Dear Robert, David, Taijia, Pancho, Kekin, Maria, Sadie, Bryan, Eric, and Rosa,

Writing about all of you made me realize how differently each of you entered my life.

Robert and David, you knew me before almost anyone else did.

Before uniforms, marriage, children, responsibilities, and everything that came later, we were three boys running around a mountain with more imagination than sense.

Those years are some of the earliest memories I have of what it meant to belong to something.

Taijia, you weren’t there every day, but you were still part of that childhood and part of the family surrounding it.

Pancho, Kekin, Maria, and Sadie, my memories of El Paso are warmer because you are in them.

David and I came into your world not speaking much Spanish and probably looking a little out of place, but you never made us feel that way.

You brought us along.

That simple kindness means more to me now than I understood then.

Bryan, Eric, and Rosa, we didn’t get the same years together.

I wish we had.

But family isn’t measured only by the amount of childhood we shared.

There is still value in knowing where we came from, who we are connected to, and what time we may still have ahead of us.

Our family has never been simple.

Our relationships haven’t all followed the same path.

But appreciation doesn’t require a perfect story.

It only requires being willing to remember what was good and recognize what someone added to your life.

When I look back, I remember three boys in the mountains.

I remember El Paso.

I remember soccer, trees, dirt roads, crowded rooms, good food, and a lot of laughter.

More than anything, I remember what it felt like to have brothers and sisters in more places than I understood at the time.

Thank you for the memories we made.

Thank you for the ways you made room for me.

And for the memories we never had the chance to make, I hope there is still plenty of road ahead of us.

With love,

Your brother,

Esteban