O Brother

When I was five, my parents came home with a baby. A brother. I had no idea what my mother meant when she said there was a baby inside her, realization that it was a human and on it's way out to live with us forever didn't connect. Partly because I lived in a world where events didn't really happen, my father didn't really do those things, and you examined your thoughts every few minutes to see if Baby Jesus would approve. Up from down was difficult, nothing was concrete, so when a warm, breathing, flubbity baby came with us I was not happy. My cheese was moved, in so many words.

The space between children was five years wide because Mom was Rh negative, and her body distributed antibodies like penny suckers on Halloween after my birth, so that any future pregnancies before the five year mark were endangered. Her third pregnancy ended in miscarriage due to exactly those complications. Anyway, during those five years, I had her sole attention, we lived waaaay out in stickland, and the closest anythings with two legs were my cousins next door but I was forbidden to play with them as my father and my mother's brother hated each other explosively. Those two kids were mean as a bear with a sore ass anyways.

You would have thought I'd be happy to have an assistant sibling, however the dynamics were again, well, weird. I wasn't allowed to help change the baby because he was a boy and I wasn't supposed to know he had a penis, according to Dad. Mom was way more realistic, but the "It's a boy" hit Dad a wallop and he never came down.

So far, I had been pretty much raised in the boy genre...I had a Zorro outfit, a Hopalong Cassidy pair of six shooters, a mitt, a football, all brought home by my father who dreamed that one day he would wake up and like Pinocchio, I would be a real boy.
When my brother did show up, Dad yelled happy days and sent money to the Church for a thank you. You get the picture.

I don't remember a time that the two of us were close and still aren't, but we have the understanding that we are there for each other if necessary. I haven't any charming anecdotes about the two of us, except I think my brother took the brunt of Dad's boy enthusiasm in more ways than one. Being the favored child isn't all it's cracked up to be, for I made sure I got out of the house by the time I was twenty-one, but he was stuck in a holding pattern for many years as both my parents dug in and refused to let him go. He was the only thirty year old man I knew still getting an allowance but I knew what he up against.

One thing that goes for the both of us is that we keep going in spite of the sirens. He finally found a job, met a terrific girl to marry, now has two children, a better job, and a house of his own. I am very proud of him for what he has gotten himself through.

He did a job terrorizing the fauna in Dad's backyard yesterday. I wasn't there, but whatever tool he used was large and had teeth, maybe it was the lawnmower that he swung at the bushes for there isn't much foliage left, mostly sticks. They need to come out anyways, and that may be the time for me and my traveling pick axe.

Peace. Just peace.