A Brother’s Love
$60. My parents split when my brother and I were young (6 & 10, respectively). Every year, our bio-dad, who wasn’t really a “father” to me at all, would give us each $100 in cash or gifts.
I had disassociated myself from my bio-dad after a few years; it was clear that he didn’t love me or want me in his life. I was the unexpected child that turned his life upside down. My brother, on the other hand, was truly his “son.” They bonded, spent time together, etc.
One year, for Christmas, my brother brought both of our gifts back from a weekend of custody visits (I had stopped going some years prior), and the gifts were smaller than usual – $60 each.
I accepted mine, didn’t care if I gut a gift from bio-dad or not, but I wasn’t going to turn down free money. In a car ride with my mom a few days later, she mentioned that we didn’t each get $60 – I was supposed to get $20, and my brother the full $100.
My brother took it upon himself to say that the disparity wasn’t “right,” and gave up part of his allotment to make us equal. At then-12 or so years old, he was making some important and heavy decisions (he eventually cut off ties to our bio-dad, too, after this).
I took “my” $60 that day and night him a video game he’d been wanting for a few months. I still don’t know if he knows why I did that, or if he knows that I know what he did too split the gifts.
That $60 was a horrible gift to realize that, truly, my bio-dad hated me; it was a great gift to realize that my little brother loved me. Story credit: Reddit/orbitalfreak