The Boys

I spent all weekend with my brothers.  We spent the afternoon napping and playing video games, but now they’re out getting me ice cream and then the recalcitrant brother is headed home.

My family often drives me crazy, I’ll admit, but when I’ve had a weekend where everyone had a good time and hung out and played cards and drank beer and just in general were good to each other (the recalcitrant brother fixed my toilet even!), it makes me lonely for them.  While they’re here, I’m lonely for them.

I don’t know that I want them on top of me, but I am sad they don’t all live closer.

These are my brothers, the two folks on the planet who share my blood, the two people I know both best and least well.  Do you know what I mean?  How familiar they are, the ways in which they still look like echoes of the little boys you played with when you were a little girl, and how you never have to finish stories because they know how the stories end, and how they still tease you about things you did a lifetime ago?

And yet, how you look at them and think that they are as mysterious to you as a man you just met, that the shared memories and experiences don’t guarantee similarities.

We were talking about bands we liked and how, for all of us, Rush is not one of them.  And the recalcitrant brother looked at me and kind of smiled and said, “After all that, there wasn’t a chance we would like Rush, was there?”

That’s what I mean.

I don’t know.  That’s a crappy explanation and I don’t feel like going more into it.

I just love those men and I hate the feeling like, even if we have a whole lifetime together, it won’t be enough time.