Family

It's times like these, sprawled across my brother's bed, that I wonder what family is all about.

He comes home, and I greet him with my usual "Hi, Booger." He replies with the typical "Hey, Fartbag." His bed is so comfortable, large, soft, and squishy. It is always dark in his room. Rarely does he open the blinds. I grab a pillow and curl up on my stomach, watching as he examines his glow-in-the-dark shirt in the half-light of the room. He catches me watching and smacks me with his laundry. I shout, and he leaves, laughing. That's about all I ever see of him anymore. A minute. Two minutes. No long talks under the blankets, no more blasting alien spaceships under the pillows on Saturday mornings when I would sneak into bed with him to save the world. Now, we call each other names we don't even mean, hoping that love of the past will keep us together.

The past. It was more than just that. Everything was so much simpler. I didn't have to worry about when everyone would get home so I could retreat to the relative safety of my room. There were nights when I could just sit in my favorite corner of the couch with good old Brian Jacques and be undisturbed except for Vin Scully and the Dodgers. Before the need for large, flat-screen televisions and booming sound systems. Before endless questions, demands, rising tensions, voices. Perhaps it is me that has changed. A radical change, indeed. Playing catch with my brother in the family room with the squishy pink football, careful not to knock over the lamp. That was before even soccer and happy evenings at the park before Coach Leo got thrown out and the nights soured. Before even the radio came to gather dust on my bookshelf, before I even bought my first CD, when everything was written by hand and so felt, not merely seen. Before he died. I guess that's all it comes down to. Why, after so many years, I still think of this, I do not know. Perhaps because I was still young when it happened. Really, though, I was old enough. Thirteen is plenty old to confront death. Four years since the bloody fourth month of his fourteenth year. I am thinking dark thoughts and speaking in reverse once more. This should stop.