FOR BROTHER

I wish I had some excise for not writing recently, but really, it is just good old fashioned writers block. I have all these great ideas on the subway in the morning and they disappear by the time I arrive at my office. Bah!

But today, a story has stuck with me and I can’t let go. The shootings at Virginia Tech gave me nightmares last night and I have not been able to shake an uneasy feeling all day. After all, Brother is in college in a small idyllic setting not unlike the Virginia Tech campus. The fact that it could have been his school (and thus him affected) has been eating away at me all day.

Of all my immediate family members, I talk to Brother the least. It’s not for any real reason except he tends to have a very different schedule than I have and time between calls just gets away from us. I realized that if something had happened to Brother, it would have been a couple of weeks since we had last spoken and I would never forgive myself.

It’s funny because Brother is almost 21 (although his ID says he is almost 23 – Hahaha) and I still picture him in my mind as the little kid with the bowl cut that used to call himself “Lonny Deroony” and pretend to me a game show host. In my mind, “What Utensil Am I Thinking Of” is still the most fun game he knows (the answer was almost always spoon) and there is nothing in the world sadder to him than at the end of the song “On Top of Spagetti” when the meatball gets squished. And none of this is fair to him.

I left for college when Brother was only 7 years old and I remember when he first came to visit me at school. He was so proud of himself because he had learned to tie his shoes. And when he came the next year and I took him to his first concert (David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails) and introduced him to Vice President Al Gore, he went home talking about how delicious the molasses cookies were at Starbucks. But now, I need to let him grow up.

It’s really hard to do this. I picture Brother’s college friends as a bunch of children at some sort of extended overnight camp. But, when I read that a 19 year old was adult enough to purchase a gun and kill 33 people (including himself), I am forced to look at college students as adults capable of feeling – and inflicting – great harm. And I realize that Brother is not at some isolated overnight camp as a small child, but instead an adult with experiencing real world dangers and situations.

So, in the end, this rambled mess is my way of expressing my relief that Brother is safe today at his college and a semi-promise to him hat I will try to start treating him a little more like an adult and a little less like someone who still sleeps with a pair of ripped jeans instead of a baby blanket.