Oh, Brother!

The first good friend I think I really had was my little brother.  I don't remember when he was born---I was a few days short of four years old---but I've seen the pictures:  a long, bright-red baby with a  shock of black hair.  That's a far cry from the boy I remember.  My first vision of him goes back to a sturdy little tow-head with a burr haircut, his summer style that Mom gave him every year, and perfectly round, blue-blue Welker eyes.  He was sweet and smart and an outrageous story-teller; now, at 46, he isn't really that much different, if you know how to look for that little boy.

The first spark of memory I have of Bo is vivid and scary.  He was scarcely more than a toddler, and he came in the screen door of our little house in Skedee with blood running from one hand.  My beloved little terrier, Frisky, had somehow gotten into a fight with the old heeler dog, Blue, from across the street.  Bo tried to separate them because he was trying to protect my dog from his much bigger opponent.  Few people might know it, but that is completely typical of the tender-hearted little boy I knew who has grown into a strong, thoughtful, often brilliant and sometimes headstrong man who still has that tender heart. 

Grandma Brown liked to tell how Bo would go to the grocery store with her during our summer visits with our grandparents, how he would ride in the cart pointing out things and saying, “Cathy likes that,” not to get what HE wanted, but to truly point out what I liked.  He set himself up for his own family by being so selfless, even at such an early age.  A few years ago, when I was feeling despondent, he told me what kept him from feeling that way:  “When you have kids, you feel like everything will be all right as long as they are OK, as long as they have things a little easier and better than you did.”  Everything I've observed about his adult life as a husband and as a father to four proves that he's lived that motto.

Katie's (his only daughter) wide-eyed, storytelling, sparkling full-of-wonder personality reminds me so much of the tall-tale-telling boy Bo once was and often still is.  He always caught the biggest fish, saw the longest snake, knew the funniest story, and told the most ridiculous lies about all of it with those great round blue eyes full of innocence.  I think some of the customers at the elevator came there hoping to see him as much as they came there to do business.   I have a vague memory that he was so known for telling fish lies that when he really did catch The Big One, his legendary fish that was longer than he was tall, in Canada when he was 5……no one believed his story!

I have a million memories of that comical boy:  feeding him a mud pie when he was barely more than a baby, telling him it was a hamburger and the sand on it was salt, and for years after he refused to eat hamburgers with salt; his asking any time we passed a drive-in if we could stop at “the stop and eat”; the way he straggled and staggered in his cowboy boots like he was a little bitty drunk old man; his refusal to take naps, so that Mama had to convince him to “just close your eyes for a while to get the red out” (he also, inexplicably, would get drunk-looking bloodshot eyes even as a toddler!); singing special songs in church; playing around the construction at the new house, where there were worlds of treasures laying around.

As we got older, our world expanded and so do the memories.  We seemed to do everything in tandem with Danny Thomas; riding motorcycles stands out, as does sledding.  Bo was probably still in grade school when he and Danny started hunting and fishing together.  I remember one night hearing him talking in his sleep and going into his room to see what was wrong, and he yelled, “It won’t fly, Danny!”  He couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9.  We both loved to play games at this age, too.  We gave the pool table a workout and could sit in the floor for hours, legs bent out to each side and backwards, playing Life and Operation and, oh, that game with the long toothpick-looking things and the marbles in a tube---Kerplunk!  That was it.  I remember Saturday mornings in the winter, haying the cattle with square bales in the pick-up, seeming like we were 20 feet up in the air.  I have a very distinct memory of being in South Dakota the summer he was 8 and I was 12, and we were coming back from the field one day in the Scout with Dad and Gene.  Dad said it was time I learned how to really drive by myself, and Bo made fun of me because I didn’t drive by myself yet, and he did.  He was still so short that he would have to half-way stand up to drive, but he was fully in control of things.  He could already, at that age, run much of the equipment there.  I don't think it ever left him less than cool-headed, even when the farm drama got tense, such as the time the combine caught fire as he was running it, sometime when he was a teenager. 

Things speed up so much after that, and not just because we were both mobile.  By the time I was in high school, he was so busy with farm work and fishing and hunting, and I was involved in music lessons, reading, and helping Mom with Sheri and the house.  The time we spent together was family time, meals and vacations and church.  But unlike so many families both then and now, we were not distracted by a million activities that kept us from seeing and knowing each other.  Mom insisted, thank God, that we all sit down and have dinner together at night.  We weren't allowed to read at the table or eat in front of the TV.  We might have the radio on in the car, but we didn't tune each other out.  What we did, we did together. 

I've only come to love and respect him more as we've grown older, though we only see each other a few days a year now.  His dry humor cracks up everyone who listens.  You never know when some straight-faced silly observation will fall into your lap and after a second, the whole room starts laughing.  There is NO other person on earth who has the card-playing mojo that he has; I swear he cheats, but my sister-in-law says he's ALWAYS like that, so I guess he just attracts good cards like static electricity attracts cat hair.  Thank God he isn't a gambler, because he'd be completely dangerous.  He has an earnest thirst for knowledge that makes the teacher in me so proud.  Everyone thinks when we are in the same place, at his house or the ranch or at mine, and we stay up half the night talking, it’s because we are arguing politics.  It might start out that way, but more often he just amazes me with his observations, wisdom, and stories about life and history and the world in general, and those are the only times we really get to talk.  We're infuriatingly opposite in many of our beliefs, but I'm so proud that we still communicate well enough to have our discussions. 

I am in awe of my brother.  I love his strength of character and his work ethic.  I aspire to have his knowledge of history, geography, and the Bible.  I envy his wit and cool demeanor.  I respect his beliefs, even the ones I don’t share.  More than I can ever say, I love him and am so very proud to call him…..my baby brother.