Within a few pages of each other appear the following gems:
"...in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the result of extraordinary Soviet-era bungling..."
Steven Pinker in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Did you ever see an old man in a lawn chair, sitting out in front of his house in the afternoon watching the road? Did you ever wonder what he could be doing, how he could spend hours alone, seemingly staring at nothing? Did you always assume―even though you couldn’t see it―that he had a beer in his lap, and more at the ready? I used to have a neighbor like that, up the hill behind my house in Monkton. I liked to see him as the Vermont country version of Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino, sitting alone with a can and a cooler, gazing out over the valley, passing the time in the shade of a striking old maple.
In the late afternoon before dinner, the guy sitting in the chair
at the end of the driveway, that guy was me. I didn’t have a cooler of beer to
occupy my time, didn’t wave at the cars (because I really can’t muster a passable
wave) as they drove home from work, but couldn’t find anything I’d rather be
doing at the time. Finding the smallest of pleasures from something so simple, and
objectively boring―even as runners and bikers passed by and my heart ached a
little―shows just how much my life is different from yours.
Tomorrow is June 6th. Every year around this time I think about, and often try to write about my brother. It's been eighteen years since that Friday morning. The time―and truthfully the difficulties in my own life―has done what time does, creating an ever-growing distance between myself and my memories of Nick. I don't often think about where he might be in 2021―I know he'd have recently turned 39, which I find impossible to fathom―because I can't; I don't know the person I'd imagine. Instead, I try to focus on the person I remember, and leave reality undisturbed.
For most of my childhood he was a head taller, and always and unmistakably the big brother. He was shy, quiet, and reserved in public, and an innocent goofball around the house. I tormented him often, in that stereotypical little brother way, prompting a level-headed request to our mother, “Can I kill Nate?” He could dole out a dead-arm punch with the best of them.
I've told you before that Nick and I were not particularly similar―in many ways he took after my mom's side of the family while I took after my dad's. I didn't look up to and try to imitate my older brother; we were different and I knew that. But I never needed or wanted a clone (I guess I'd be the clone) and I'd like to think that each of us learned from our differences along the way.
In lieu of any particular story, let me tell you some things about the Nick that I grew up with. He was into the cosmos, and asked for a telescope one year for Christmas. We used to lay out under the stars in our head-to-toe snowsuits in the backyard in January. We collected baseball cards together, that is to say we strapped on our backpacks and rode bikes to the card shop together. Our collections were as separate and sacred as pillowcases of candy on Halloween night. We hardly ever traded, this wasn't a game, and besides we each had our favorites. (In those early 90's days, his was flamethrower Nolan Ryan, mine was Yankee first baseman Don Mattingly.)
Like outdoor cats with instinctive, ever-increasing perimeters, we explored every patch of woods and neighborhood road within the reach of our pedal power. We were not allowed to cross Williston Road, and we didn't―that was the only rule our mom put in place. The woods behind our house and across the street to the barbed wire-topped airport fence, we were there; the tree fort in the gully at the end of Clover, and the network of bike trails at the end of Duval, we were there; the deceptively expansive patch of woods beside Kirby, and the mysterious and seemingly isolated wilderness behind the new condos on Patchen, we were there.
There was a beaver pond at that last one, and for a time we'd bike there every day after school. Each afternoon we'd walk around on the beaver dam near the base of our newfound favorite sledding hill. We spent hours pulling sticks from that dam, maniacally dismantling the water-tight structure and tossing its pieces near and far. With the compromised dam at our feet, our anarchy was limited to creating some leaks and watching the pond water escape. Nick and I returned each afternoon to find the dam patched back together, some freshly chewed trees now a part of the structure. The unseen beavers won out when the humans became bored and moved on.
Nick was more than fond of his food, sometimes sitting at the table with fork and knife in hand, like a batter in his stance, ready for the pitch. Our endless list of outdoor activities, and later, his near-constant running turned both of us (though him more than me) into hot-burning furnaces in constant need of feeding. His favorite was lobster―I can still see his ear-to-ear smile from the Polaroid of his birthday at (the long-defunct sister restaurant to the also long-defunct Sirloin Saloon) Perry's Fish House. My mom would make crepes for dinner, the ever-simple recipe finally written down (in English) by her mother in observation of her grandmother. She used twin copper skillets over high heat while Nick and I ravenously devoured each round, gradually falling behind the pace of production. There was only one way to eat crepes in my house: one by one as they came off the pan, doused in maple syrup, rolled with a fork, and cut into pieces with the side of the fork. The whole show must’ve been over in about fifteen minutes.
We talked all the time―in some ways I don’t think we ever stopped. I’m quite sure it was my mouth running most of the time, but he made it so easy. We competed at everything, often punctuated by childish outbursts of raw (always negative) emotion. There was no trash talk or gloating from the winner―all Nick showed was that muted, sheepish half-smile after getting a big hit or scoring a goal with his rocket-strong wrister. I can still see his face, holding the game ball in his hand, after throwing a backyard no-hitter: a visibly restrained, embarrassed shit-eating grin.
I can also hear his frustration when things didn’t go his way. In the backyard on the wiffle ball field, or across the street at the ice rink, he almost never let it out around the older guys in the neighborhood. He’d walk slowly back to the bench after making an out, head down in silence. But when it was just the two of us, I saw that competitive fire burn its way out.
We used to ride our bikes to the high school and play tennis. Neither of us had ever had a lesson, and our overhand serves were a work in progress at best, but we did our best and quickly learned enough to get by. (It didn’t much matter that our games weren’t polished, we pretty much only played each other.) I can see him pound a ball into the net and erupt in frustration, “I suck!!!!!” But it always seemed to blow over, once the competition was done, things were never particularly tense between us. Or maybe they were for a time; it’s hard to hold a long grudge against your brother.
“Nick and Nate” they called us. We existed together in their minds and our own. We walked to school side by side, and later stood at the bus stop in the dark. We played Legos and Nintendo for hours, and complained to our mother, “I’m bored.” We collected rain water off the roof of the run-down old back porch, filling every container we could find. We had epic battles of Nerf (actually tennis ball) basketball in my room, and (tennis ball) hockey in the basement and garage. We played catch―he threw me grounders and fielded my throws―long after he’d quit playing baseball. We fought all the time, running around the house, slamming and plowing into doors, for every reason and no reason at all.
We
grew up together, in most every way. I never needed to wonder if he’d be
there―he was. I never felt alone as a child, because I wasn’t. These are the
things that I like to remember.
At middle school socials (dances), when we weren't "fight dancing" to Reel Big Fish or The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, multiple girls slow-danced with me on their knees―I was that short. I don't have any pictures―of awkward slow-dancing, repeatedly jumping off the stage and into the crowd, or doing full-speed, head first penguin slides across the cafeteria floor in the green Adidas pullover hoodie that I wore just about every day of the 7th grade. I don't know what brought that to mind, but I'm going to have to listen to "Sell Out".
They think that words and thoughts can impinge on the physical world in prayers and curses. They underestimate the prevalence of coincidence. They generalize from paltry samples, namely their own experience, and they reason by stereotype, projecting the typical traits of a group onto any individual that belongs to it. They infer causation from correlation. They think holistically, in black and white, and physically, treating abstract networks as concrete stuff. They are not so much intuitive scientists as intuitive lawyers and politicians, marshaling evidence that confirms their convictions while dismissing evidence that contradicts them. They overestimate their own knowledge, understanding, rectitude, competence, and luck.
