Intro to this story:
This is a story from my original website… times have changed now… I no longer celebrate holidays; my brother is now 30-something , and we lost our mother 3 months after this was written. My brother has had a very hard time with that fact. I hope he resolves his inner conflicts soon. I still love my brother very much…
When I was almost 6 years old an event occurred that forever changed my life: my brother was born. I don’t remember much of him as a baby, it seems he was walking and talking and tormenting me a week after his grand entrance.
Don’t get me wrong, I had lots of fun playing with him. My favorite thing to do was dig out all my too-small dresses and dress him up as a girl. I’d put his short hair in little stubby pigtails and parade him around the neighborhood, telling everyone he was my sister. He never seemed to mind.
All too soon, though, the fighting years were upon us. I was into saving the environment, theater, and the arts. He was into all sports, designer clothes, and picking on “geeks” like me. Then at the ripe ol’ age of 17 I moved out and thought I really didn’t care if I ever spoke to that spoiled little 11 year old again.
Now my brother is a 19 year old man. He looks and acts a lot like me, now. He is going to college, something I never had a chance to do. He is taking all video and media arts classes. He loves skateboarding, and he listens to the same music he used to call awful.
This past holiday season my kids and I rode up to Hibbing with my brother for our mom’s side of the family’s Christmas get together. Neither I nor my brother had attended this yearly gathering in a long time. My two boys really liked spending time with their uncle. I spent a lot of time on that 3 hour drive up just wondering who my brother was, and feeling bad that we hadn’t ever really got to know each other.
He didn’t say a whole lot either, he just kept driving and put in a new cd in the radio every now and again. He kept saying that this is the time of night when the deer are out. He was really worried he was going to hit a deer, I guess. So I tried to cheer him up by telling horror stories about car-deer accidents. We were all having a nice conversation about how stupid deer are when he slammed on his brakes and started honking. Two of the biggest darn deer were standing right in the middle of the road, frozen. I looked at the trucks speedometer, my brother was going about 95 miles an hour, and there was no way this huge extended cab truck (which, by the way, was my father’s) was going to stop in time.
Then my brother did something I would have never thought to do. He shut off all his lights. The deer instantly started slowly walking across the road again. In complete darkness we sat and helplessly watched. The deer didn’t seem to care, or maybe couldn’t see, that this black mass of metal was hurtling towards them. Single file they crossed the road, the first one reached safety when we were about five feet away, the second one we seemed to miss by just inches. We finally came to a complete stop about 20 feet later. My brother turned his lights back on and started going again. Now we all just watched out the windows for deer. And I just sat there in aw of my brother’s quick thinking and calmness. He definitely isn’t the hyper little boy I grew up with anymore!
I still don’t see my brother much, but my mom keeps me up to date on all his escapades. I guess he is going to Jamaica soon. All by himself. Just because he can, I suppose. He goes on lots of trips. He’s seen more of the world than I’ll probably ever see. I am just proud to call him my brother.
