Lisa Jay | Sydney lifestyle photographer » Sydney Photographer

 I have two younger brothers. Jesse is 3 years younger & Kieran is 12 years younger. Today is Jesse’s 30th birthday.

Last month Jesse sweetly & generously took our mum, myself & the rest of us out for lunch on mothers day. After lunch we stepped outside and the perfect light made me spontaneously snap these images of Jesse & his lovely wife Brigitte & my other bro Kieran. I’m glad I did now, cause I love these pictures & the people in them.

Brother, on your 30th birthday, the memories of growing up together are precious. Sharing our bedroom in childhood, the sign language we created so mum & dad didn’t know we were talking at night when we were supposed to be asleep, negotiating the space, the time we got our own rooms because I put all your things in the living room & said ’from now on this is going to be  your room’ which lasted about 10 mins until mum & dad realised what was going on, the cafes you would set up & sell the family Vegemite sandwiches from our own kitchen for 2 cents, the shops you would set up & sell the family back our own items, the time you created a ‘display’ in our room consisting of a skateboard, some shells & a tonka truck… I took one look & said “sorry, I know you’ve worked hard on this, but it has to go”, the perfume we used to make for mum consisting of squished up flowers and mint from the yard in jars of water, us age 3 & 6 - break-dancing on the kitchen floor to this & this, You were the only primary school child I knew whose favourite song was George Thouroughgood’s  ’bad to the bone’ & you were so cool, you even owned it on vinyl (along with the Bon Jovi ‘slippery when wet’ album), & how much we loved singing to this albumof dad’s, the tennis lessons, the drama lessons, age 5 or so when you were cast in a tv commercial asking Pat Cash if he had any ‘cans’ & the trouble the director had getting you to say ‘navratilova’….. “nav-lat-il-ro-va”, all those Saturdays in our 80′s childhood when dad would finish teaching music in Paddington for the day & our parents would walk around Paddington markets looking at herbal candles and all kinds of other things we did not care about & we felt like it was complete torture until we got to the part with the playground… then when you were 15 & I was 18 we went to Paddington Markets on our own & loved it! Funny how everything changes. The way you used to pick up your little guitar case when you were a toddler & say “I’m going to work” because you saw our dad go to work with a guitar case in hand, & the fact that now you are a  talented & creative maker of your own music. Funny how nothing changes.

Happy 30th birthday to you little bro. I’m lucky to call you brother. Keep making music, keeping being awesome, keep working on saying navratilova…. you’ll get it one day.

Lisa xx

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