Into the Wild has been sitting on top of our DVD player for weeks now, waiting to either be watched or returned to Blockbuster. We do this a lot - rent movies and end up owning them - but the good news is that we are not alone in putting off watching movies we know do not end well. Yesterday Tom and I finally had two hours of semi-quiet to sit and fold laundry and watch it, and I’ve been in a funk every since. As far as the movie goes, it was just okay. Too slow, too long, and not brilliantly acted, but it is a great story, and one I was excited by when I heard an interview with the author nearly a year ago on NPR. But the timing was off. I should has taken the movie back and got Ella a Curious George video for 6am, because this week was not the time for me to watch a movie about a 20 something year old kid leaving his family for two years, angry about his childhood, feeling the need for adventure, and then wandering into the woods and dying.
Tomorrow is my brother’s 20th birthday.
I haven’t heard from him in over a year and a half, and have not seen him in almost three years.
I’ve said before that his story is not mine to tell, but my story is. And my story is that my little brother got the short end of the stick in our family, and when I was given the option to save him or save myself, I chose me. And I think about that every day.
The last time we talked, he made it clear - if he wants us in his life, he will let us know. He asked to be left alone, but still, I google his name, I search faces on networking sites, I get anxious and angry, and then I just get sad. I type his name into the search boxes - I try his nicknames, our mother’s maiden name, possible places he could be living. I don’t need details, I don’t want to spy on him, or pry into his life. I just want to know he is okay. I just want to know he is alive.
Because even though he doesn’t want us in his life, he is still in mine. We talk about him a lot. He is included in our nighttime routine of naming family members in the hallway photos, and Ella asks to hear the story about how, when my parents brought him home from the hospital, they told me they found him under a seashell (he was born in a tiny clinic in northern California, close enough to the beach that it’s threatened by high tide). She asks where he lives, and I make up funny places, like the moon, or in a submarine. They know who he is, because I hold out hope that someday he will know who they are also.
I wonder if he talks about us, to whoever is in his life. I wonder if he ever says “My sister Ivory” instead of lumping me into “my family”. I wonder if he is happy. God, do I hope he is happy. I hope he is finding what he is looking for, and that one day I’ll get a call from him and he’ll say “He sis, you won’t believe what I saw today…” and we can go back to being friends. I hope he knows he can come here. I hope he reads this blog occasionally and sees that you can be so much more than your past dictates, and that there is so much joy in the world, even for us.
I hope he’s having a happy birthday, and that someone made him a cake.
Filed under: Luke
Secret: Sometimes I stay up until 1:30 am searching for my little brother online. I never find him. He doesn’t want to be found.
He does share a name with a up and coming Arsenal footballer though, so I know a lot about that kid’s career.
I am officially taking the day off, as of a half hour ago. I made it to 5pm, isn’t that enough? Buba the cat can take care of a toddler, right?
Ella has actually been wonderful today, which isn’t something I can say most days. Oh sure, I might say it, but I am lying. It’s a mom instinct -even when our kids are hellions (I always read this as hell-lions, which isn’t so far off) and we want to run away from them, we still want to protect them from other’s scrutiny. But, come on. She’s almost two. Sometimes she is a jerk.
Today she has been pretty sunny. Right now she is chasing the cat around the house with a cup of dry pasta, trying to get him to eat. She slept late, did not beat up the little boy we watched all morning, did not whine when it took two hours to make a “quick trip” to Costco, took a good nap, and has not asked to watch TV all day. If every day were this easy, I would consider having more. Oh.. wait…
Today is just done though. I am done. Out of energy. I’ve spent all day trying not to think about things, that by sundown all I can do is lay around and - you guessed it - think about the things I was avoiding. Tom is at work, and if he were here I would ask him to watch Ella so that I could go drive around and cry. I always cry better in the car - I feel like I am going somewhere, moving, not wallowing (though, of course, I am.) But letting Ella see me cry is not something I do a lot - not when it is an angry cry, a bitter cry. So, instead, I have let Ella spread dry pasta on every carpet in the house, knowing that even after I vacuum, I will still find one curled rotini in the arch of my foot at midnight.
Today is my little brother’s birthday. He is 19. The long story is complicated and not something I am going to share with the whole-wide-internets, but the short story is that he needs his space, and I want to give it to him. I want to be supportive in an absent way, which is to say: I miss him every day but try not to let him know that, except I hope he really does know that, and that he lets me back in his life. And around in circles I go. I hope he had a good day, that he has people with him who helped him celebrate, and that he knows he has family, even if he is not ready to let me, my husband, and our kids be that yet. He’s my little brother - how can I not worry? At that age I felt like I had no one in the world looking out for me, worrying about me, wondering how I was. I hope he knows we do think about him.
(Picture from the “Things Ella Treasures” set over on Flickr. Ella collects things in the bottom door of the china cabinet, and a few days ago it was this photo I usually keep on the bookshelf, but that she swiped. Luke and I on an adventure, in the days of the Laser and running away from our family together. I’m afraid maybe I ran away without him realizing that he wasn’t part of what I was running from. Maybe I am just getting what I dished out.)
