my brother gets a new name

Earlier this week, my family crammed everyone into the family van, pulled up to a curb, grabbed luggage out of the trunk, and frantically exchanged hugs before we pulled away from the curb minus 1 just a few short minutes later.  Can you guess where we were? 

As my brother took his luggage in hand, a greeter on the curb asked him what his name was.  He replied, "Kenneth."  It was Clint who reminded him that Kenneth is no longer his first name.  "No, no," he said, "Your first name for the next 2 years is now 'Elder'."  We all laughed out loud at this, in an anxious sort of way, as if we could be sitting around the dinner table on any ordinary night.  However, as he hugged everybody in turn and a few of us leaked at the eyeball, none of us could forget the fact that we had had our last just such "ordinary" dinner with my brother the night before.

We always knew the day would come.  My family just didn't realize that the waiting period was like a snowball that loomed bigger and bigger and rolled faster and faster the closer it got, until all in a matter of 3 minutes or less, the moment of farewell had come and gone.  And it left us feeling like we had each taken a punch to the gut.  We simultaneously cried and smiled as we watched him walk away with the greeter who would probably show him his new home for the next several weeks, before he moves to Paraguay.  As they walked away from us, suddenly my brother was one among many 19-year-old guys in suits.  He probably would have blended in if not for being so dang tall.  "Wow," I thought, "he's one of them."  A good thing.

It was a really great day.  I could tell Kenny was excited to be there.

I am so grateful for my family's ability to lighten up moments with a quirky and often - ahem - inappropriate sense of humor.  Clint fits in perfectly this way, I'm sure to the delight of my dad.  Before Kenny turned his back to us for the last time, Clint piped in these epic last words to my brother: "Baptize the hell out of them!"

...I think I owe Clint for the parting laughter we shared and for the final goofy grin that we saw on my brother's face.

...And I'm sure Kenneth will do just that!