When my brother and I were pre-school age, we lived out in the country on my grandparents' fruit farm and we were really each other's only playmates, with the occasional exception of our cousins. There are many pictures of Mike and I playing outside together, swinging on the swings, riding tricycles. Inside we did lots of coloring and watching TV, sometimes I could even get him to play house with me. I remember him sitting at the little table and chairs we had set up with the plastic doll dishes, saying, "Pass the jeddo please."
When we moved to our house in Farmington, which was in an actual neighborhood, things changed. Lynn, the girl across the street, and I became fast friends. Mike didn't have anyone right around his age so he loved to torment us. I recall many times when he was on one side of my bedroom door, pushing with all his body weight trying to get in, while I was on the other side doing the same and yelling all the while for my mom to make him stop. Once, to my mom's embarrassment, Lynn's older sister's boyfriend told us he could hear us screaming and fighting way across the street while he was visiting.
Yet we'd always protect each other if one of us was being hurt by a third party. The day in 2nd grade when one of the Musino boys came out of nowhere and punched me in the stomach on my way to school, Mike, a kindergartener at the time, defended me to the hilt, yelling and threatening the kid to stop. We'd hit and punch each other, but God forbid someone else should lay a hand on one of us!
As the years went by and we grew up, we each had our own circle of friends and did our own thing. We really didn't intermingle much, but we co-existed in basic harmony. I didn't think too much about it when I went away to college, but when I came home for the first time at Thanksgiving break, he asked me if I wanted to go the movies together. We saw "Play Misty for Me." I was touched that he actually wanted to go with me, and my mom told me he really missed me being around. When I was working out in Rocky Mountain Park the first summer, he and his friend came out to visit and tried to get a job working for my boss, Ted James. Ted told them he'd hire them if they'd get haircuts, but they decided against it and left Grand Lake. I was disappointed.
Then came marriages and families, and once again we didn't have a lot of interaction. Flash forward through our dad's death, all our disagreements, and our five-year estrangement to the present time and our tentative reconciliation. I would never have predicted all of our difficulties, although Mike might say differently. He frustrates me tremendously with so much of his behavior, and he leaves me holding the bag as caretaker for our mother. But I somehow need to get past all that and accept the fact that he's just not going to do his fair share, because after all is said and done, a relationship with him is still important to me.
Why go to the trouble? Why not just write him off? Those are questions that my husband has asked me and that I've asked myself. Well, the longest relationship I'll ever have in my life is with my brother. He and I know each other almost as well as we know ourselves. We share origins, core values, childhood memories, places, people, and crucial moments in time. I just can't let go of that.
We may never have the kind of relationship I wish we'd have. I'd love to have a sibling who I could count on to be in my corner--a key member of my support group. Someone who would lend an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on when I needed it. Someone to rejoice with me when I'm happy and feel my pain when I'm sad. I would gladly reciprocate. My mother has that type of relationship with her brother. Maybe I'm expecting too much; maybe a sibling relationship like that is much more rare than I think. It would truly make me happy but in its absence, I'd like to make my relationship with him the best it can possibly be.
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