Today my little brother turns 30. Wild. He and Courtney are coming over for dinner tonight. I’m looking forward to spending time with them without mom and dad. Lucas is beside himself with excitement.
Jonathan was an angel as a baby. We were good friends spaced four years apart. I read to him, dressed him up, and he tagged after me everywhere. He used to want to wear his hair in ponytails like I did. The only place on his head where his dark brown hair was long enough was right in front, so mom put a tiny ponytail there. He looked like a little quail with a topknot bobbing up and down as he ran in his long nightshirt.
We used to rise early in the morning together and go out to the family room to watch cartoons. When it was cold, we’d build a fire in the fireplace to keep warm. We had a soft brown love seat that was perfect for cuddling and also perfect for turning into a tent or a pirate ship, with the help of a hobbyhorse as a mast. There was a crazy quilt that mom and some other ladies made in a class, where each block was made by a different person. Mom won it somehow. Jonathan loved the blocks with fuzzy velvet and smooth satin. We played plenty of furniture-hopping games, with a roiling sea below us or lava so hot to burn our skin off.
One week before Jonathan turned four years old, he punched me in the nose. It was his first aggressive act, but not his last. For the most part, when we were small we got along well. But I also remember several knock-down, drag-out, hair-pulling, eye-gouging fights in the hallway between our two bedrooms.
Every summer we went camping with our dad and his friend Ron and his kids. I hated Ron and his brats, but I loved fishing and shooting and hiking with Jonathan and Dad. Dad whittled little flutes out of willow branches, and Jonathan and I would toot around the campsite for hours. We splashed in the creeks and attempted to catch minnows with our hands. We loved toasting marshmallows and eating Dad’s Mulligan Stew.
We also went annually to Wright’s Beach near Bodega Bay. We took RoRo’s Beaver motor home and brought Mom along too. Jonathan and I always rode up in the bed above the cab, facing the road before us with anticipation and delight at being up so high above all the other cars on the road. We’d stay at the beach campsite for a week or ten days, spending our time digging in the sand, running from waves, and flying kites. We used to race along the shoreline. For a few years, I won the races. But as Jonathan grew, he became faster and stronger than me. Jonathan loved the long kelp whips that washed ashore. He’d spin them around his head like a lasso or jump on the air bladders to make them pop. Many sand castles were crafted and demolished through the years.
At night, in the motor home, we’d listen to cassette tapes on the portable player or listen to mom read to us from funny books like Bunnicula and The Celery Stalks at Midnight. We’d all laugh so hard until our eyes teared up and the RV shook and mom was gasping and couldn’t read. Jonathan and I would beg mom for one more chapter, and then one more, and then just one more. This is one of my happiest childhood memories.
At one end of Wright’s Beach was a huge rock formation. Dad would help us climb up it while the surge pounded below and around us. Sometimes we’d all clasp hands together to help each other over treacherous spots. I don’t know how Dad carried all the fishing poles and the tackle box while wrangling two kids over the rocks, but he did. Jonathan was more patient at fishing than I was. I’d stand and look out to sea and think romantic thoughts and talk to God. I used to wish we could step off the rock onto a boat and just sail away.
At the other end of Wright’s Beach was a big rock that we could climb into. It was full of holes and every summer at the end of our vacation, the four of us would trudge out to Picture Rock to take photos of each other framed by the rock’s holes.
Jonathan got interested in soccer and played many years on many teams. At first I went to some of his games, but they happened all the time and I lost interest. I’m sorry I stopped going to watch him. I became self-absorbed and sicker with asthma as I got into the upper grades and middle school. I paid less attention to him and we fought more. I watched from a remove how Jonathan struggled in school; how Mom and Jonathan fought over homework or reading each night; how he resented the work that wasn’t easy for him. He was headstrong and bullish. Jonathan stayed back a year in second grade after mom finally convinced the school to test him. He punished Mom everyday for trying to help him overcome his “learning disabilities.”
We grew apart as we got older. It started when I left elementary school and Jonathan behind. Because he stayed back one year, we didn’t end up having one year together in high school like we should have had. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if we had been at Bella Vista together though. By that point, Jonathan was into skating and Beastie Boys and had friends who were punks. It alarmed me when red laces appeared in his Doc Martins. His friends were skinheads and bigots, and they called him Jonny. Jonathan’s hair grew long; girls called him all the time. He started sleeping in really late (sleeping it off) and stopped participating in our home life. But so did I. I was away from home every possible moment—out with friends, at rehearsal, singing in choir at 7 a.m., dating an older boy. I just moved on.
The period from around high school until I was 25 or so seemed like I was an only child. I did my thing in school, dated, went away to college, made new friends, fell in love. I saw my parents plenty, but my brother is sort of a shadow in my memory. He sold drugs in high school and made a bundle of money. He also partied in a way that was completely inconceivable to me, doing things that I still won’t do. I’m so grateful that I never knew this until much, much later. The stories he tells scare me to death. Mom and Dad never knew and still don’t. If I had known what he was up to, I might have narced on him.
Jonathan finished high school and got to graduate, thanks to the fact that he was sleeping with the office aide girl, who expunged hundreds of cuts off his attendance record. Somewhere around here he partied too much and got a DUI. Jonathan sent one friend, who was in the passenger seat when they hit the parked car, to the hospital for a few days. Revoked license, lawyer fees, court dates—the whole circus followed. I think it scared him pretty bad because he started to shape up after that.
Jonathan got into an apprentice job/training program and became an apprentice carpenter—then a journeyman, then a card-carrying union member. He’s worked for U construction for 10 years now. He is masterful at what he does. He shuns responsibility, but his employers keep giving him supervisor and foreman jobs. He does extra side jobs on the weekends. He makes good money and he bought a home about six months before Ian and I did. He has two dogs, loves dirt-bike riding, hunting, fishing, smoking, barbecuing, and music. And women.
My brother lives less than 10 minutes away from me. We see each other on holidays and family celebrations. Our relationship is getting better and better, but very slowly. He adores Lucas, but refused to hold him until Lucas got to be about 20 months old. (Jonathan once dropped a baby and didn’t trust himself to hold his nephew.) When Lucas was a baby, Jonathan went out and bought him a little Honda 50cc dirt bike. I guess that’s what proud uncles do.
Last July, for the only the second time in his entire life, Jonathan introduced us to his girlfriend. Courtney and Jonathan have now been together a little more than a year and I’ve never ever known Jonathan to date anyone for that long. We adore her. I like the way they communicate with each other; I like the way he respects her endeavors, the way he respects that she’s going to college and that she like to run. She was almost finished with school but she recently decided to change to nursing, which means three more years of school. Jonathan smiles and says, “yeah, she’ll be a great nurse.”
It’s taken a lifetime for me to appreciate my brother for who he is. Now I know that he is kind, good, and brave. He is fiercely loyal, hard working, and clever as the devil. Jonathan doesn’t play games. He calls it like he sees it. He’s charming and funny and handsome. He deeply respects talent and honesty. He has learned to see the good in all kinds of people, especially working-class people, but he doesn’t take any shit either. I have no doubt that Jonathan always acts in accordance with his conscience, but I also know that Jonathan’s ideas of right and wrong don’t always match other people’s. If I called him and said, “I’m in trouble and I need you right now,” he’d be here in a heartbeat, with plastic bags and a shovel in his hands, ready to fight my enemy and bury the body.
After we see each other and it’s time to say goodbye, Jonathan now tells me he loves me and kisses me. He now calls me sometimes just to talk. There were so many years when we never talked. We are so different, and yet I love him so much.
Happy Birthday, Jonathan.
