Siblings

Brother, Brother, where art thou?
Swallowed into your world.
Sister, lost soul, I need you.¹
Both broken, but you’ve now thrown pieces.

Cereal once, now a dust bowl between us.
You’re always worse, or better.
Let’s stop racing.
 
Same posture.
Same jawline.
Same cadence.
Same head nods.
But our stories don’t track in old ways.
 
Precious Boy
The Great Son
Favorite Daughter
Darling Girl
“Kill the calf. My child has been raised!”

There’s one you don’t see who has not fallen once.
Take a moment to sing that child’s praise.
 

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One

When the medical personnel in the ICU pulled the plug on my father, it was anticlimactic for me. I can’t speak for my two sisters who were there, nor for my brother who was (as I recall) not there but was somewhere near the hospital in Kalamazoo, or perhaps somewhere back in Dowagiac. To be candid, I don’t reliably remember which of my siblings were there.

What I clearly recall is that when the time came, we all seemed to adopt a similar poise and decorum. We each took a turn to sit by his side and briefly say something in his ear, not knowing whether any of his mind was left for him to hear and understand it, but before and after that each of us stood outside the room and yielded the space around our father to his third wife, to her son who he’d come to regard as his own, and to the many adopted grandchildren and great-grandchildren who had been born and were being raised with him as their beloved patriarch.

I felt no envy or resentment toward my father or my step-brother. I felt a sympathetic sadness for my step-brother, who I shall call ‘Mike,’ and for his children as they all crowded around my father’s dying body and wept and wailed and begged him not to go. I understood, perhaps instinctively in that moment, and certainly consciously in retrospect, that Mike and his children and grandchildren were in the process of being torn away from a love and a paternal presence that I had already lost before I was old enough to comprehend. 

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Oliver and his sisters played a game when they were kids. He forgets exactly what they called it – “Maybe just ‘Cops,’” he says.

In the game, he and his older sister pretend they’re cops – they’re partners – and they go on a lot of cop calls, and then they have lunch at a diner, at a pretend diner, where their younger sister plays the waitress at the counter. She takes their orders and often dishes out clues to some crime they’re trying to solve.

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Mill Valley, California, was and is a geographical wonderland. Mount Tamalpais crowns the valley below, and two nice creeks drain opposite canyons, meeting in the center of town to produce a large, permanent stream all the way to Richardson Bay. Besides a very healthy steelhead run, these dual arroyos supply water for a super abundance of blackberries.

Mill Valley wasn’t very hot in the summer as there was always morning fog, so these berries ripened slowly and evenly. One had to wade the creeks and bring ladders at times to harvest, but the extra labor was worth it, as the crop was endless and the fruit extraordinary. My parents were coffee drinkers, so throughout the year I saved every one of their MJB cans for my summer and fall berry stand.

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My big brother can’t stop making fun of what people wrote in the sympathy cards we’re supposed to answer. What makes him think he commands insight into the written word? He’s a twenty-two-year-old heating and air conditioning guy. I’m seventeen, and already my writing has been rejected by some prestigious sites and publications. I’ve been rejected by pretty low-rent operations, too. But I think I have a shot.

He flips another card across the kitchen table, this one off-white with gold script. As it lands it flies open. “Check it out,” he says.

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To: Doug, Dierdre, Benny, and Rudy
From: Annabelle
Date: 10/28/19
Re: a bit more help on everyone’s part

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I have just come off another weekend with Mom and Dad and have a few observations. First of all, instead of lifting up all the area and Oriental rugs in the house, Dad added three new ones to the kitchen – the only room that prior had no rugs. I spent a good deal of Saturday trying to unwind carpet fringe from Dad’s Hoveround axle.

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“You got a good grip?”

“I got it.”

This exact sequence was spoken by the same two people on two separate occasions approximately 60 years apart. Alan, the younger brother, is the nervous questioner. John, the confident respondent.

In the first instance, Alan is eight years old and John is fourteen. It’s a snow day, and Alan is edging out onto the crust of ice that covers the pond. He has a rope knotted around his waist, and John holds the loose end.

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(interviews with eight-year-olds)

Having a sister is about farting on her.
Having a brother is about hugging him.

Having a sister is about hide-and-go-seek.
Having a brother is about fighting with him.

Having a sister is about her annoying me.
Having a brother is about rounding up for a fight and maybe him giving me his Xbox.

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