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Brothers


When I look back on my childhood, I recall what it was like growing up with a brother.  He was five years my senior, so agreement on social issues was usually open to discussion.  Like when I would be crying and my mother would ask "Why are you crying" and I would say "He hit me".  Turning to my brother, she would ask " Why did you hit your brother" and he would say "He looked at me" which, to him, was a perfectly valid explanation.  But, there were also the paybacks like when my Mom would ask "Where's your brother" and I would say "He's up in the tree you told him not to climb".  

As difficult as the art of negotiation was, the funny thing is, I always wanted to be with him, much to the chagrin of he and his friends.  Being so much smaller, when teams were chosen for touch football, "touch" being open to interpretation, I was always chosen last, if at all.  And on those occasions when I didn't make the cut, I would go home and tell Mom the kids were being mean to me.  She would sit me on the back steps with a popsicle, and with sticky hands and heavy heart, leave me to contemplate the injustices of my world and eventually come to realize they weren't really all that bad.

When my brother left for college, my initial reaction was one of joy since I would be the benefactor of his bed and his radio.  Life was going to be good until, of course, he actually left. Life changed overnight, and although the loss was temporary, it was the first that I had suffered.  Possession of the things he left behind became symbols, that I valued not because they were mine, but because they had been his. Something I didn't even know existed had been lost.

As we grew to adulthood, each marrying and challenging life independently, we very seldom wrote or called.  We met mostly through occasions of necessity as with the funerals of our parents.  It was odd to find we had not much in common, until our conversations turned to when we were kids. Instantly we shed the years of absence and talked freely and with joy about those times.

Today we are on the last laps of our journeys, with more years behind us then ahead.  But even though our paths were varied, the bond of birth burns within us still.  When I recall our youthful years together, and ask myself why he is so special, I have to steal the phrase that he once used.  “He looked at me”.  I guess that's what big brothers do.
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