I'll be your mirror

Or, What I Did This Weekend

We spent Saturday in Madison, WI, where my little brother lives, where I went to college, and one of the favorite cities of my whole family. We picked up my brother at his apartment. He was waiting on his rickety back porch, and crushed me in one of his hulking and enormous hugs. No one is sure how my brother turned out so towering and huge. My parents are both significantly shorter than him; my dad, as my mom points out, looks like a little thumb, now that he has started indulging his lifelong dream of shaving his head. My parents suspect some long ago giant of a relative is responsible for my brother's size, I think it's the hormone jacked-up milk we both drank all day when we were kids. We got back in the car and drove to Monty's Blue Plate Special, a sort of old timey diner, but because it's Madison, a lot of the food is vegetarian or vegan. In the car, my brother and I laid out the untouchable subjects of conversation: the need for haircuts, the fact that my brother's shoes are falling apart despite the undeniable truth that my dad gave him money to buy new shoes, sex, proper interview techniques, financial security, and the need for my brother to stop using an envelope wrapped in duct tape as a wallet. For their part, my parents request that we don't act like idiots.

The conversation topics greatly reduced, my brother and I are left hooting over favorite Mr. Show skits, while my parents lament over the Republican idiots (including a local car dealer with hokey commercials) in Wisconsin trying to beat their beloved Senator, Russ Feingold. But they quickly get sidetracked by my brother and I laughing uproariously and try to join the Mr. Show conversation. This occurred just as my brother, a little too loudly, I thought, for a family diner, said, "have you seen the cockring warehouse episode?" And I said, "Yeah, it's hilarious!" And then, simultaneously, "Any cock'lldooooooo!" The rest of the conversation, which will go down in R-rated family history, went like this:

Mom: What are you talking about?
Jon (my brother): Cockrings!
Me: (laughing) Shhhhh!
Mom: Cloth rings?
Jon: (whispering) No, cockrings!
Dad: (authoritatively to Mom) Hot...hot wings, like chicken.
Jon: (forehead hits table due to laughter) Cockrings!
Dad: (finally hearing right) Ohh! (chuckles)
Mom: Cockring? What is that?
(Siblings are unable to speak due to convulsing laughter)
Dad: (quietly) I'll tell you in the car!

The rest of the day was spent walking around favorite old bookstores and record shops and the student union, which has a terrace on a lake and is still one of my favorite places in the world. Jon had to leave for work, so we gather on the sidewalk outside my dad's favorite record store to say goodbye. My brother, who has always been wonderful, has somewhere along the line become a sweet and sensitive giant of a boy. He puts an arm around my shoulder and says goodbye in a kind voice that has been ridiculously deep since he spoke his first words, and I feel my eyes fill with tears, because I get to see him, and my parents, so rarely. My parents and I are smiling as we watch him walk away. On the way back to Neenah, we sing along together to the oldies station, my mom in her high warbling voice, my dad in his deep, booming voice, and me in a voice which is simply off-key. The sun is setting over the farm fields, and glistening on the tops of the trees, and the highway stretches on in front of us, full of potential.

*This update typed while listening to Stan Getz.