“Can I help you with anything today?” the sales associate at the Eaton’s Centre asked.

“Maybe,” I said, drifting my hand over cashmere sweaters of red, blue, and green. “I need a present for my brother. It needs to be nice. Something that he’d actually wear. And it needs to be light, cause I’m sending it overseas. It’s the first Christmas he’ll be away from home.”

“I see,” said the man.

“And it needs to not be crazy expensive,” I added, moving away from the cashmere. 

My brother Tommy and I are very different. He is tall, blonde, quite slim, and athletic. I am none of those things. I am a very open person–ask me how I’m doing and you’ll liable to learn all about my work schedule, what I’m writing at the moment, how much I drank the night before, and my latest crush. My brother is a much more private person. I usually have no idea what he’s thinking or how he’s experiencing something. We find it easiest to communicate with quotes from Seinfeld, When Harry Met Sally, and other assorted pop culture bits that only hold significance if you grew up in the Mosher family.

In high school, while I was testing the waters of vintage with button up shirts, suit jackets, and (what I considered to be) humorously ironic T-shirts, my brother wore the baggy hoodies and jeans characteristic of white boys at our school. But some time after he entered university, and rap gave way to acoustic guitar, our styles began to dovetail. He adopted plaid cowboy shirts and outdated tourist T-shirts that looked like they came out of my closet.

They looked like they came out of my closet because they very often did. In our twenties, my brother and I enacted one of the oldest sibling traditions–the battle over who’s wearing whose clothes. There were always excuses, such as our laundry became jumbled and my Mom would fold up my dress shirt and leave it in Tommy’s room. But I know for a fact, the way every older sibling does, that he snuck into my closet when I was not there.

It was especially bad when I moved to Ireland after graduating from university. Tommy had wanted to do the same thing, and I think he felt that either I stole his plan or that I should have waited and moved with him. There’s a part of me that wishes I had.

But it was my first shot of independence and it was better that I do it on my own. Having known no one in Dublin, I found an apartment, a job, and, eventually, some friends. But as summer turned to soggy fall, I got more and more homesick. Not even the purring voice of Joanna Lumley in holiday adverts (“Christmas isn’t Christmas without your Marks & Spencer”) could convince me to stay in Ireland for the holidays. So I came home, after only six months.

Now, three years later, my little brother is across the Atlantic, going to teachers’ college in Glasgow, Scotland, and working with adorable kids with indecipherable accents. Other things I know he’s doing via Facebook: hanging out with pretty girls and taking lots of pictures. When I was living abroad, I was on Skype with our parents every other day, and vividly remember phoning my Grandma on my cell phone from the minuscule, cramped break room at work. I’ve only talked to Tommy on Skype a couple times. What was the very first thing he said last time I actually reached him?

“Is that my shirt?”

“You see,” I explained to the sales associate. “He likes wearing my clothes. There’s a part of me that just wants to send him a pile of my cast offs.”

“That’s not much of a Christmas present,” the man said. “Also, I have older brothers. Wearing their clothes is only fun when you think you’re not allowed to.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

I was a fan of European chain stores during my time in Dublin. Whereas in North America, men’s clothes are stunted in retrograde preppie purgatory, men’s fashions in Europe (even in such a small and marginalized capital like Dublin) are unabashedly cosmopolitan and trendy. But we’re living in a globalized world. After I bought a light, denim-coloured hoodie at H&M in London, England, my heart sank when I saw it for sale back in Toronto.

“It’s difficult, because I don’t want to buy him something he can get himself.”

“He could get almost anything himself,” the man said. “That’s not the point of a present.”

“You’re right,” I said. I picked up a grey, woolen sweater. You could probably find identical ones in Scotland, authentic ones that didn’t even come from a mall. But it was soft and warm, and I could picture Tommy wearing it traipsing around the moors or hanging out at the pub. Anyway, it wasn’t really about the sweater–it was about the act of sending it, for my little brother and, as it turned out, myself. 

When I brought it home, I called my father about coming to pick it up and take it with some other presents to the post office. I had also bought him a little Canadian flag patch, because it seemed the type of thing you send to someone when they’re away.

“Dad, how did we make it so that he knows it’s a Christmas present?”

“Well, he’ll probably just open it when it arrives.”

“But that’s what I mean. Shouldn’t we write on it, ‘Do not open until the 25^th‘, or something?”

“He can open it whenever, Max.”

“But he won’t know it’s his present! What I don’t want to happen is this–I don’t want him to open it up when it arrives, and wish he had saved it for Christmas day, when he might be feeling a little bit lonely, and a little bit homesick, and he’ll be really happy he has gifts from us.”

“I think your brother is less sentimental than you,” my father said. “I also think he’s planning on travelling in Germany that week.”

That’s when it hit me. My little brother was overseas and not coming home for Christmas. He had chosen to do the brave, independent thing I had been unable to do when I was his age. Christmas would not be defined by his not being with us, and what he was missing. Rather, this Christmas he’ll be out on his own, having an adventure. I’m so proud of him for that.

And Tommy, if you’ve read this before you opened your gift, I apologize.

I’ll take the sweater.