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7:35 a.m. - October 12, 2002
Luke 11:11
Autumn is here and sends drafts across the wood floors and it is warmer outside than in.

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Brother sends email inquiring into birthday and Christmas and requests, No Books Please and I am at a loss.

The birthday/holiday season isn't one of warm houses and laughter around tables though in recent years my sister has made a heroic effort to emulate Thomas Kinkaide instead of Dickens.

It's me. I'm difficult.

My brother asks, What do you want for your birthday and he doesn't understand how these things bother me. I don't know him and he doesn't know me and it is a situation where both acknowlege yet do nothing about it, probably because I don't know how. Our birthdays and Christmases are books for me, sports equipment or tickets or magazine subscriptions for him, flat like uninteresting kitchen characters in pulp fiction.

Growing up, he was my father's favorite and I was the example not to resemble. Even now, thinking about sports and fathers I'm jealous, wondering why the sport I played--soccer--wasn't manly like my brother's t-ball, or how it might have felt to be privy to a father's distaste for another son.

I'm a closet syncophant to my brother, if only I opened my mouth.

My brother had no idea about the books because I didn't tell him, until his ASL literature professor at the university asked if he was related to me. The next time he visited he asked to see the books and inquired whether I'd dedicate one to him. A golden moment, that, and I scoffed.

Like I said, it's me. I'm difficult.

But I scoffed to cover up eye warmth and embarrassment that I was pleased at his comment.

Somewhere between our personalities there must lay some commonalities; it is likely writing, but like many things in my family, that's a topic untalked about. How easy to seize upon the differences and fester instead of moving past the past. But I fester because even now, I'm jealous that current accomplishments can't undo the stones.

 

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