My brother came with an old laptop that had a very old nintendo blackjack game that we used to play. The groovy music reminded me of late nights in Van Nuys where he, Chris and I stayed up late playing while eating rice and broccoli while fifteen miles away from us in Hollywood, stars lounged in bars and backyard palm treed oases.
My life has only shreds of what used to be back in my 20's, when all that mattered was this nintendo game and the next job we were gonna be on, and my black dog Jed and all the boys we chased with passion. My life came to get me like a late postman, fat and jolly, grabbing me up like his last package and delivering me to three kids and a jumble of a life, the remnants of which are still scattered around me now, at 59, now again about fifteen miles away from where Chris and Michael and I ate rice and played video blackjack.
The goalposts of my life are clear, there's my mom or the stand in body of my mom still trying to be here, in her chair, near us and the dogs, and my kids' books and blankets, the pieces of a life lived frantically fast, birth to high school, and now all the kids happily scattered to colleges and careers, and my brother comes to help with my mom and he brings his video game and we are sitting, again, in the same place, with that same music.
I can't imagine a life like his, where he spent all his time away from the things that mattered the most. He lived in a paused haze without his son, filled with the fake friendship of vodka. He moved far to try to find peace and then after losing every opportunity for free living that he could find, finally luckily got sober and now, five years later, is becoming a person who lives works and feels.
We only see each other twice a year when he comes to take care of mom so I can have a break and not think of her every minute. We sometimes get to spend time together on the couch and each time it is comforting. He's louder than me and sillier than me and easier than me and shorter than me. He cares the same as me, though, underneath all that stuff in there that he is careful not to disturb, the parts he hasn't found the guts to look at with two eyes. I have plenty of those parts too. Maybe none of us get to all the scary stuff too easily.
I just thought the video game summed up most of my brother, he still has it. He brought it with him. And it is fun. He's still in his 20's. He's good at being in his 20's. He never went to one talent show, one morning school drop off, one bagel breakfast, one boring basketball dinner, one drivers' license test, one graduation. He's still just starting his life and I lived my life mixed with three other tumbleweeds sprouting out of the pavement growing wild at our house. We just went opposite ways. There's so many ways to go, every way is open.
I love my brother. He shows up for me. We know each other, in dark ink indelible basics. Even when some of it is so old it may not even be true anymore. We did have mom together, for sure. We three were a tribe, we still are, and I'm sure my other brother would have liked to belong there. He deserved to be. Old history, not to be undone by this writer. But as a sister, I needed all the brothers I could get. At least I can say it if I can't make it true in real life.
It's all okay, though.
There's still today. I just got the flu and I had not at all expected that, it was in fact a rude shock, so anything can happen. So there's room for surprises.
I'm grateful for the tarmac of my life, with the literal skid marks and thin skin and heart weakened weighted by tremendous love. I may not know what to do with it, but I knew what I did with it. I spent it, I bet it all and I closed my eyes and you guys know I won.
