A weak ode to idiot brothers

I resurrect this piece from a previous entry...

 

IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME, back in the summer of 1964. One afternoon, my older brother and I didn’t have much on our itinerary, so we decided to play that time-honored game called “Stretch.” A rather ordinary diversion for boys in our neighborhood.

 

Here’s how it works: You borrow a steak knife from the utensil drawer in the kitchen and go find a decent piece of turf to begin. Then you and the other player take turns throwing the blade to alternate sides of both feet. Perhaps a few inches or maybe a foot. The goal, of course, is to make the other spread their stance to the point where they topple over. If you fall first, you loose. But there was another strategy; alternate the distances between long and short. Really gets into your opponents head.

If you were a true gladiator, you played “Stretch” barefoot. I have a few scars on the top of both feet to prove it.

Our game was going fine until one of us speared the knife into a hard surface and the blade broke. Uh-oh. We got some serious explaining to do now.

So my brother – never one to be short of creative ideas at the spur of the moment – devised a humorous way to defuse the potential wrath we faced. Within moments, the plot unfurled.

The two of us staggered up the driveway, my brother’s arm wrapped lovingly around my shoulder and appearing to support me. I was the “Igor,” clutching the knife handle in one hand with it’s broken blade pressed against my gut.

Mom!!! Mom!!! Come quick!!!!

Boys of a long-ago summer day

A few years ago, while driving through Greenwood – a south suburb of Indianapolis – running some necessarily bland errand. As I was winding south on those narrow streets, I noticed some Little Leaguers on a nearby field and I decided to take a detour and watch the game briefly. 

I walked over to the fence near first base and became a silent spectator. I saw a freckle-faced kid sitting alone in the dugout staring at his friends on the field. And as it so happens, I found myself drifting back through the cobwebs of memory to a time when I played ball myself: Evansville, circa 1967.

I had "graduated" in age to try out for Little League at Harwood Elementary School. The new coach's name was "Joe," too, and he vaguely resembled Jabba the Hut with a bad Beatles' hair cut. It was fairly well known that the only reason he wanted to coach was so that his younger brother could play. When you're the coach you can make such arbitrary decisions. 

As the coach surveyed the talent on try-out afternoon, he had just learned his brother was a few months shy in age of being eligible to play in our league. In fact, as irony would have it, I was barely old enough to play myself. So I found a place on the team as an outfielder, perhaps by default and some modest talent.

Life was good. I had a new uniform. I was part of the team. Then the season began. 

A mantra for all seasons

I DON’T REMEMBER exactly when I first heard it, but it was several years ago. It was a new phrase introduced into the family lexicon. I don’t recall the circumstance when I first heard it, but I do know with certainty it was my Mom  first uttered the expression. It has since been spread with winking humor among my sister Kris, brother George, my daughters Erin and JoAnna, and some of my grandkids. This succinct line has become somewhat of a family punch-line.

            

I like it much. It’s a universal phrase that seems to fit right in any language. The words fit quite nicely in situations when you don’t know what quite to say, or when you don’t know what to cough up when you disagree. Suffice it to say that…

            

When you get the notice in the mail from the IRS and you feel the dragon blowing fire up through the esophagus when you learn for the second year in a row you’ve underpaid. They want their money now and you ain’t got it. Everybody’s gotta do what they gotta do.

            

You’ve been separated from your significant other for a few months and you get the latest car-insurance premium that’s higher than Cheech and Chong on meth. It’s been adjusted because you’re considered single. For you see, your former significant other told your agent in private a few months before leaving you that the “divorce should be final” by the next payment period. Everybody’s gotta do what they gotta do.

Call of the mild -- and strong

SHE SLIPPED INTO THE ROOM, made her way to my Dad’s bedside and stealthily took his vitals. He stirred a bit and an eyelid strained open a bit to observe this early morning invader, recognizing her beyond the haze of his sedation and a smile weakly blossomed on his face.

Sorry to bother you, George – I mean Buck – but I gotta get this information for the charts. What can I do for you? she asked, gently touching his forehead and peering into that sliver of an eye looking back at her. Okay, let’s move you a bit and let you get a look outside, okay. It’s cold but it’s a pretty day outside coming your way?

A shift of a few centimeters gave the man a glimmer of a salmon-colored sunrise erupting beyond his window. His visitor reached for his hand; she smiled and winked at me as she left the room. Other cases to evaluate; other patients to see. And I suspect each received the same respect and level of care, and the depth of comfort that my Dad had received.

About a week later, he was gone. Just like that on a late Sunday night. It was a few days before Thanksgiving, and I was grateful my Dad finally was at peace.

But I recall most clearly those final few weeks when he drifted between this world and the next marking time in his room with my Mama, sibs and close family and friends. It didn’t occur to me then as it does now. Curing disease often doesn’t happen in this dimension, but it always does in the next. The human body comes only with a limited warranty. That is why the Manufacturer installs us with souls, I believe.

An uncommon wealth

The road bumps you along low-slung hills and sharp peaks, slumping banana and trees and a thousand explosive and subdued shades of green. The nearby volcanoes are draped with clouds. Almost like something out of Jurassic Park. 

Our bus bumped and swerved as it slowly made its way to a place that was very familiar to some of us, who had been there a time or two before. Here and there, boys rode horses and herd cattle and waved as we drove by. Young girls chased pigs along a dried-up creek bed. And mothers walked dusty pathways carrying bundles on their heads.

For some in our group, this was a homecoming of sorts to the remote Nicaragua village of Abagansca. The name of this place – loosely translated from some nearly forgotten Indian tongue – means “river with little black pebbles.” I had been there twice before -- and my heart was beating faster with anticipation as our ride came to a halt. 

Keep your eyes on the road, dummy... I wanna collect my pension!

Youngsters who are driven by their grandparents are less likely to suffer serious injury if they're involved in a crash, says a new study in the journal Pediatrics. Those findings come from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who says that even though grandparents are in an older group that has a higher risk of severe crashes, youngsters driven by their grandparents suffered fewer injuries in crashes and were actually safer than children driven by their parents.

Chalk one up for us fledlging geezers. Gen-Xers and you other hyphenated inheritors of societal labels, take note: You can’t teach youngsters driving safety skills from Grand Theft Auto and other video games.

I initially learned mine from my Dad while heading down that mirage-glistening road to Folsomville to family get-togethers in the early ‘60s. With his foot comfortably stomped on the pedal at 60, occasionally he’d let me and my brother and, in years later my sister, take the steering wheel of that family car.  Learned fast eye-to-hand coordination that no computer game -- not even Grand Theft Auto -- could ever teach. Especially with a nervous, screaming Mom riding shotgun.

You’ll kill us all, Buck!

Mothers transcend DNA and Hallmark cards

In the next few days, mothers throughout America, and other places around the globe, will begin receiving myriad messages of thanks, gratitude and love. It’s an ancient ritual, giving a nod to fertility and the continuance of life. In our country, this tradition is traced back to Julia Ward Howe, whose words became the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic became the rallying theme of the Union during our Civil War.

Yes, sons, daughters, grandchildren and others are scouring the stores to find the right gift, order the sweet-smelling bouquets, zero in on the right trinkets and prepare to offer them at the Altar of Motherhood. We hear in advance from this oddly wonderful sex, Oh, I don’t want or need any of these things. I already have so much!

They cheerfully accept the crude art of their kids, marveling at the intricate, abstract designs of family stick figure holding hands. Their own visages being grotesquely portrayed with weird hair-dos and body shapes which  would stun Picasso. The scrawled messages have more misspellings and reversed letters than a hostage note written by the backwoods boys who got whacked in Deliverance.

And for adult children, it’s not much better. The brief notes we write are weak footnotes to the sentimental screed found within the mass-produced greeting cards we buy.

I’ve been around long enough to know what mothers are, more importantly, what they do. They clean up the messes their children make from birth and sometimes into adulthood They wipe snotty noses and other gross places; grimace against projectile vomiting from sour tummies;  and listen carefully for cries during the night denoting pain or sadness or fear. Especially when some invisible Boogeyman has invaded a darkened bedroom.

They endure mindless prattle and answer questions Einstein and Oprah could never answer. Their eyes mist up when they hear correct recitations of the ABCs, counting numbers and fill-in dialogue from Dr. Seuss books. For you see, such imagination needs a nudge.