Mom was right, BJ finally grew taller

For years, my mother told my 5 feet 10-inch youngest brother, "Just wait, you’ll grow."
All through his high school years as he tried, in vain, to stretch those last couple inches to our Dad’s 6-feet, she promised him he would grow some more.
All through his years at the community college with our 6-feet tall big brother she reminded him that guys sometimes have a growth spurt as late as 21 years of age.
My mother knew what she was talking about. At 18, my husband was one of the shortest and oldest members of his senior class. Before he graduated at 19, he had a 6-inch growth spurt, pushing him up to the average height of a man.
But my mother was wrong about my brother. By the time he graduated from college, her promises of growth faded. He grew in his career instead – from a high school math teacher and coach of a winning tennis team to a high school principal over a student body of a 1,000 plus.
He was hurrying to stop a fight between a couple of those students one day when something in his back shifted drastically and pain descended. The chiropractor tried to help, but it wasn’t enough.
After years of watching our mother deal with back pain, he knew what to do: rest and lose any excess weight.
That didn’t help. He said he felt a tightness in his back, like his muscles were not quite long enough. At Thanksgiving time he shoved his back pain aside and visited with our sister, her husband and four sons. The three oldest nephews, averaging 5-feet, 11-inches, kept him looking up and realizing anew that he would always be the shortest man at family reunions.
At home, the family doctor unable to relieve my brother’s back pain, took X-rays and referred him to a surgeon who removed a partially herniated disk.
Betwixt and between, he lived with back pain and noticed some peculiarities. After all those years of wrapping a tie around his neck before his day of school, he couldn’t get his ties right. "I had to tie it differently," he said. "It was always coming out short." And was it his imagination? It seemed like he didn’t have to tuck his shirts in as far as he had in the past.
He didn’t think too much about until he saw his nephews in the spring and realized – he was looking down on them. Startled at the change in his view point, he got out the measuring stick.
Long after his 21st birthday, a couple years after his 40th birthday, he realized the fulfillment of mom’s assurance: he had grown two inches. That same year he also shed a significant amount of weight. In their yearly Christmas letter his wife announced she had a new, taller, thinner husband.
Because he was way overdue to see the fulfillment of our late mother’s promise, he went to the doctor. After checking his blood for growth hormone the doctors all agreed his delayed growth spurt was not a problem. He was just taller.
He says maybe it had something to do with the way he stood. Whatever the reason, mom was right after all. It took a while, but little brother also became one big brother.