A Wedding Speech
I’m heading to New York this week for my brother’s wedding. Will and Kristin are technically married, as they had a small and intimate ceremony in December of last year, but since only parents were present at the first wedding, we’ll all get to celebrate their second marriage this week. They’re going non-traditional, much like my husband and I did, and will not have speeches at their reception, so I’ve taken it upon myself to write and share one anyway.
Will, this is the speech you did not ask me to write. You thought you’d get out of it! Ha, loser.
Note — I did get his permission to share this, though he doesn’t know what it says beyond this line.
My brother, Will, and I are twins born five years and five days apart. Huh? Yes, I said what I said. The Brazill genes run strong and because of it, he and I look almost identical to each other. Our personalities have always complimented each other too. Our sister, Maggie, a Sagittarius, is a Fire sign through and through, but Will and I are Tauruses, Earth signs, ones with nature.
He’s always been so “one with nature” that Will was nicknamed Nature Boy as a kid. He took a hard stance against clothing as a toddler, often taking it off at daycare. The teacher would lightly knock on my classroom door, ask if I was available to help, and I’d talk Will off the ledge he was about to leap off of and ask him nicely to put his clothes back on. For some reason, he always listened to me.
Growing up in the middle of an older sister and a younger brother offered the best of both worlds. Maggie and I would play with Barbie’s until I grew tired of being Ken or the Jeep, only allowed to say what Maggie told me I could say.
“No, the Jeep doesn’t talk,” she’d yell at me.
“The Jeep can talk if it wants to,” I’d mutter as I left the room on a search for my brother.
When I found Will, we’d kick a soccer ball around the yard, practice diving for a football, or play cards. I had two built in best friends.
I don’t remember the three of us playing together much, but I recall one instance our mom did not find as funny as we did. And actually, in hindsight, maybe it’s the reason the three of us rarely played together again. Maybe we weren’t allowed to play together after this.
When Will was about two years old, Maggie and I thought it would be fun to play catch with him. If you’re thinking that we were lightly tossing a ball to our baby brother, you’re mistaken. He was the ball. Maggie stood at the top of the hilled driveway of our house in Wisconsin and I stood at the bottom. Will sat quietly in a 90s stroller that certainly wouldn’t pass today’s safety standards, excitedly awaiting his ride.
“Stay there! I’m going to send him to you,” Maggie shouted from the top.
“I don’t think we should do this,” I yelled from the bottom of the driveway.
And then she released him.
Pure joy and happiness spread across his face for a brief moment, before the stroller took a hard right and Will went flying face first into the rock wall, then toppled over onto a pile of lava rocks. As you can imagine, it was not a soft landing. Our mom sprinted to her baby, yelled at her two girls and if my memory serves me right, all three of us were in tears by the end of it.
Sorry, Will. That was our bad.
For a lot of our lives, Will was our personal punching bag. One St. Patrick’s Day, for instance, Maggie actually stepped on his face, causing him to lose a tooth. He was so elated by the fact that the tooth fairy would visit, he quickly forgot that it was because his big sister had placed her disgusting foot on his face.
The last time I ever punched him was when I was around nineteen years old and he was fourteen or fifteen. He was being rude to our mom, and I punched him with all of my might while scolding him. He turned to me, quietly, unbothered by the hardest hit I could muster and said in a calm, collected voice, “I’m going to hit you back and it will be the last time I ever hit you.” He punched me square in the arm; just a quick pop, and certainly not at full strength. We both laughed as a I grabbed my shoulder in pain, and I told him I would also never hit him again.
Along with being our punching bag, as most little brothers are, Will was also our personal baby doll. He has always had beautiful hair, but as a kid, his bowl cut was an invitation for us to decorate him with the colorful barrettes and hair clips we adored. He willingly obliged and would sit patiently as we did his hair. His senior year of high school, his classmates agreed and he was awarded “Best Hair for the Class of 2010.” Unbeknownst to him, I credit Maggie and me for his award. After all, we took great care of his boyhood locks in those early years.
One of my favorite stories of Will took place when he was a senior in high school and I was in my early twenties. Maggie had moved out of state at this point and our parents were on vacation in New York, sans kids. They had asked me, loosely, to keep an eye on Will, as he was still in high school.
Around one in the morning on one of the nights I was “in charge,” I received a phone call from the Kansas City Police Department. Everyone knows you never want a call from an officer, but you especially don’t want one in the middle of the night. Thankfully, the officer opened with — “Your brother is fine.”
At this news, my heart started beating again and he continued to say that Will and his friends had been causing trouble and Will had given the officer my number as his guardian for the weekend.
I pulled up to the local high school, as I was instructed to do so by the officer, and was witness to one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen to this day. Sitting on the curb, heads in hands, embarrassed and mad that they were caught, were Will and six of his friends. Next to the line of regretful teenage boys were no less than fifty garden gnomes, flamingoes, ladybugs, flowers, and every other lawn ornament you can picture, lined up perfectly along the curb. Hiding my laughter, I learned that Will and his friends, split between two cars, were having a competition to see who could collect (and by collect, I do mean steal) more lawn ornaments from our local community. Both cars had been caught and the competition would end in a tie.
The group was let off easy and when asked if they knew where each of the gnomes and ornaments belonged, they told the officers they definitely remembered. I wonder how many people woke up the following morning with a surprise ladybug and a gnome on their lawn and how many others wondered where their gnomes and flamingoes flew off to in the middle of the night.
Will has since received countless gnomes for gifts on his birthday and Christmas and kindly asked us a few years ago to “PLEASE STOP WITH THE GNOMES.” This one — you did to yourself, brother.
The original Brazill Five — Bill, Teri, Maggie, me, and Will — were all present the summer our family restaurant, Brazill’s on Main, opened in the small town of Westfield, New York. My mom and my now husband, Jake, worked in the kitchen together. My dad and I ran the front of the house. Maggie bartended, but was also a flight attendant and would jet off here and there throughout the summer for a few days, but would always return. Will showed up sometimes. Kidding, kidding. When he realized that good money accompanied good service, he was fully on board and grew to be a wonderful server and bartender.
Our family run restaurant is where Kristin, his lovely bride, came into our lives. Kristin worked at the breakfast and lunch restaurant next door to Brazill’s on Main and the relationship between her and my brother blossomed in the alleyway behind both restaurants. Kristin soon moved over to serve at Brazill’s on Main and in an early conversation with my mom about her, she described Kristin as “You, Shea! She just walks in and knows what to do and just does it. We love her! You’ll love her!”
She was right. I love her.
Kristin is a beautiful and kind soul. She is quiet by nature, an extremely hard worker, an incredible artist, my friend, and now mine and Maggie’s little sister. If you watch Will and Kristin together, you may notice that the two of them seem to speak a secret language that only they can hear. They hold hands and float together when walking, never seeming to be in a hurry. They are compliments to each other, support each other, and choose each other every day.
To end this, I’d like to share an Irish Wedding Blessing for Kristin and Will —
"May you be poor in misfortune,
Rich in blessings,
Slow to make enemies,
Quick to make friends,
But rich or poor, quick or slow,
May you know nothing but
Happiness from this day forward."
It is with great pride that I get to celebrate this wonderful couple this week in the small town where it all began. Here’s to Will and Kristin, our newest Mr. & Mrs. Brazill. Happiness from this day forward.
And that, my friends, is a speech I will not deliver, but wanted to write anyway. All my love to the happy couple!
Lovely unspoken speech! I was legit lol-ing at the “catch” scene, knowing that Will turned out just fine 🤣