A Birthday Greeting for Inverbras

Tomorrow Inverbras will be celebrating another birthday. Zexiv remembers one birthday of his, just a few years ago which was spent in San Francisco with the whole family. In the picture above, Inverbras is happily holding on to his latest acquisition then, a PSP console, given I believe by Ozaymas. He, Grasshopper, Zexiv, and Puff had just come from the huge Sony store downtown, and Zexiv snapped this picture with his Mamiya 645 camera.

As the only boys in a family of 5 kids, Inverbras and Zexiv shared a room for many years, just as his 3 sisters did. Zexiv remembers all the adventures they used to have growing up, exploring the roof of Redbrick, playing with fire and firecrackers, racing their Matchbox cars (Inverbras' favorite was a purple Alfa Carabo while Zexiv liked his Dune Buggy) down these twin yellow tracks, sneaking downstairs late at night to unseal Christmas presents (there were 2 plain boxes that said "Citgo Mini SSP Laker Special Red or Blue" which turned out to be sidewinders) to take a peek, playing with Inverbras huge collection of plastic toy soldiers and their air guns. Inverbras was always a natural athlete, doing well in sports such as swimming and tennis (not surprising for someone who practiced hitting balls against the parking garage everyday when the cars were gone; he later went to Harry Hopman's one summer for tennis camp), while Zexiv preferred his guitar, Beatles records and books, but they still found a lot of things in common.

Looking back further to earlier birthdays, Zexiv vaguely remembers a 10th birthday or so of Inverbras where Inverbras went with their father to the Plaza - I believe this was an old restaurant somewhere in Makati - to pick up something and Zexiv stayed behind. Still another birthday was spent in the U.S. in Wisconsin, where Inverbras was vacationing that time following his graduation from high school. Their relatives there organized a birthday party for him there and his cousins invited some of their friends. Zexiv, who had never travelled overseas, was very curious about the idea of Inverbras meeting young people, primarily of the opposite sex, from other countries, and asked him excitedly when he got back: "So what did they say?". "Happy birthday", he replied. Of course!

Yes time really does fly. Zexiv is currently reading this excellent book now where one of the characters, an old man, tells a younger friend that life is sort of like a steep hill - seems to take forever when you're going up and once you're at the top and over the peak, the descent is much faster and the years seem to pass much quicker, going downhill. It's amazing how much gray hairs have sprouted in the last year or two where, just a few years ago there were almost none (Zexiv speaks for himself here :)).

In his mind, however, Zexiv will always see Inverbras as his youthful co-conspirator in many of their adventures at Redbrick (the placing of watusi in sealed tennis cans where the lid suddenly popped out and made them both jump comes to mind) and the older brother who bought him a sandwich in the cafeteria in prep when he got left behind by the school bus. One of the "booley brothers", as a friend at the gym once nicknamed them.

Happy birthday, Inverbras! All the best from Zexiv,Puff, and all of us at Camp _____ (soon to be named :)!