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It’s winter and, forced to be inside, away from drifts and icicles and rasping snow, kicked up by steady winds, one tends to become introspective, perhaps a substitution for hibernation. Who knows, winter brings out the inner man, and summer, the outer. There is snow drifted up against the door wall and a draft streams under the window ledge in the bathroom.
Outside on the deck, black capped chickadees and downy woodpeckers and their like, cling to the feeders, feasting on sunflower seeds and burrowing beaks into suet in search of bits of fruit and nuts. The light is waning, a thin watery yellow of the westering sun against the leafless maples and oaks, casting long lavender shadows across the brilliant glittering snow. On a walk earlier, I’d watched a pair of horses, geldings, one deep brown, one paint, kick their way through hock deep drifting snow, sending low waves forward from each hoof as they made their way from the far fence edge across to nuzzle my frozen face with big warm soft noses. An exhalation through a pair of nostrils fogged over my glasses momentarily and I was like a near blind man, fumbling my way through a drift to stumble back to the plowed driveway.
One becomes introspective, like I started to say. One thinks of winters past, Christmases past and today I found myself thinking of my older brother John and what had bound us together as friends.
John and I grew up sharing a bedroom, sometimes just him and I, sometimes, depending on how tight quarters were, with our younger brother Richard. So first we were forced into each other’s constant presence. Sometimes that was a good thing, where in we spent hours with board games or books or plastic soldiers, making war across the cheap red throw rugs. And later, as we grew, our games became more intellectual. There was one we had with our pair of dictionaries; one would take the A-M and the other, N-Z, and we’d quiz each other on the meanings of various obscure words. Lying on our wooden bunk beds on a chilly winter day, in Augsburg Germany. It was not for nothing that, later in life, John was called, affectionately, The Walking Dictionary.
At night, sometimes, by the light of illicit flashlights, we’d make animals and other things with shadows on the ceiling. No body part was safe from this game. Sometimes we’d be caught by Mom who ssshhh’d at us and ordered us to sleep. And we snorted and snuffled into our pillows, reckless laughter that threatened to bring in Mom again.
And forced into a constant companionship, even outdoors, we hung together, at least till we entered junior high school.
Sometimes, as ignorant children, we bickered; bitter words that children will hurl thoughtlessly, spurred by envy or a slight or an unintended bump of a knee to a head during a more physical game. Sometimes our companionship was uneasy for this reason and we, with a mother wiser than I’ll ever be, would be sent to the basement “until you can be friends again.” Being younger and smaller, I was disadvantaged, but not always the loser of a squabble. Not always.
Thrown together by necessity, we were also pushed together when I joined the Boy Scouts and my father insisted I be in John’s pack. So when I took the Scout oath, right hand raised with three fingers up and thumb crossed over my pinky on my palm, I joined him again in hiking and knot tying and ax sharpening, sleeping in a pup tent, sleeping closer together than even at home. Even then we shared our camping food and set up our tent together and loaned each other pocket knives to cut rope.
In later years, as adolescence brought hormones and new friends and sharper differences in our ages, we were prised apart as we found our way into our teens. He was more bookish and fond of classical music and I began to lean towards longish hair and hippie rock n roll. The struggles became more verbal as we tried , less and less successfully over time, to share our room. Younger brother Richard was not subject to any of our enmity, being no threat to either of us and several years younger by far.
But then, one shocking fall day John sat Mom down and told her he joined the Air Force and suddenly he was off to basic training and then other training and then Okinawa. And for some reason, we began to correspond. He on yellow legal pads, me on notebook paper. We poured out thoughts of home, popular music, sci fi, and later, after our father died suddenly at 55, of John leaving the Air Force on a hardship discharge and how to get him out .
I think that it was the draft, the selective service system that sealed our friendship. John was already far away, Kadena, Okinawa, Japan and I was I-A for the draft, ready, able and completely unwilling. And on the day I was rejected by the military as unfit to serve, I wrote him a voluminous letter that spelled out my relief, my joy. It was not long after that our father died and John came home for the funeral and eventually was discharged so that he could help with the family. He was a resister within the military and I from without.
I can remember the first time I hugged John. On Dad’s death I volunteered to drive to LAX with Richard to pick John up, and at the gate, tentatively , we wrapped our arms around each other and around our grief for moment. We were a motley trio, John with regulation hair, me with longish curls and Richard with a elderly villager’s bald pate and fringe for his part in the high school’s production of Teahouse of the August Moon. That earned us a few stares when we stopped at Denny’s for breakfast. And to the wide eyed woman, gaping over the booth’s divider, I gave a fish mouth, puckering my lips tightly and waggling them like an oxygen starved tetra at the water’s surface. She ducked down quickly.
And, never one to resist harmless mischief, we posted antiwar rally posters right on the window glass of the Ventura Selective Service Board office. I drove the getaway Bug, and John taped the posters up, brazen for having picked full daylight during business hours.
We spent a few months, hiking together, hanging out with my hippie friends in an loosely knit commune in a narrow, brush choked canyon, Sisar Canyon, that was home to towering sycamores and prickly leaved live oaks, a stream that ran almost year round. Climbed the face of Topa Topa, rocky bluffs that stood over the far east end of Ojai Valley. Nowadays you can ride a mountain bike up on top of it. Hiked into Santa Paula Canyon for a three day, only to be rained out on our first night. Wet fuel, wet clothes and a missed turn sent us back, not discouraged but disappointed. And the classic line from my brother as he departed the tent, folding shovel and TP in hand, “I hate crapping in the wilderness.” Indeed.
Its hard to think of what companionship and friendship are, where they come from, the purpose and what sustains them. Why do any of us have friends? Why is there a spot in our hearts and minds that needs the company of others? Oh, biologically one can see the need for friendship that leads to love and procreation and all that, whether one believes in pure evolution or in creation. But why have friends?
Sometimes I think too hard about these things, in my sixth decade, each year a step more weighted with mortality and physical discomforts. But I yearn, like any man must, for someone who, besides a spouse, understands me fully, having years of history and easy conversation and tea. And later, dark ales and philosophy and reminiscence of times past. Out here in Michigan, so far from the two men I love the most, John and Richard, and being the unwitting victim of, not only distance, but the trauma of having been in a religious cult that devalued such human love as being inferior and undesirable and a distraction, its been a struggle to let any man close to me. Actually its been nearly impossible.
Other than my brothers. God bless them both.
Tears come more easily as I age. I am more sentimental by far. In my youth memorabilia came and went in a blink or a heartbeat or a flick of the wrist as I tossed high school yearbooks into the trash can. Now, I can’t let anything go that reminds me of, links me to another time when I was young and relatively innocent of worldly distractions like sex, drugs, rock and roll.
Just this past summer, in a quiet little sandwich and ale shop in Eugene Oregon, having sandwiches and a brew with my younger brother, Richard, my daughter Jenny, my mother and Sarah, Richard’s ex-wife and still friend. Richard had me close my eyes and when I opened them, there was a relic of my 11th year, a Japanese version, over sized, of the Swiss army knife. Fork, spoon, corkscrew, screwdriver-bottle opener, can opener, scissors, saw, and blade melded between two fake pieces of animal horn and held securely in a leather pouch made for a belt.
Tears welled up instantly. I could not believe what I saw, there on the table cloth with my name printed in my mother’s hand, black permanent marker on the back side of the pouch. Chuck. A relic of, a memory of hikes through towering pines in Bavaria, a frozen winter camp in a giant army surplus tent with tan sub-arctic sleeping bags, prickly with feathers, and olive drab air mattresses that turned soggy at night with leaks despite endless patching. Scrambled eggs and bacon cooked in a stainless steel mess kit over a gasoline stove.
And so the tears welled up and threatened to spill down my cheeks, my eyelids near to over flowing with hot tears, my cheeks flushed, my throat welling up, my voice failing me. I could only reach out and hug him and utter profound thanks over and over.
Why? Why is friendship so important? Why are we not all islands of independence, stiff arming intimacy, shrouded and armored from anything resembling loneliness and the sense of isolation. Why are we not all, as Paul Simon said “a rock, an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries”?
There is a design that cannot be, I think, explained by evolution. A fortuitous mix of part emotion, part intellect, part physical and part spirit that for no other reason, created by God because it pleased Him to see us care for and about and with each other. Sure, one could say that the utility of friendship is purely biological, a survival reflex, a progeny producing relationship twixt man and woman, a gathering of strong muscles and quick reflexes that protects and defends the vulnerable and elevates the strong to leadership. But it seems to go so much deeper, nurtured there in the hours over a pot of tea or a bottle of wine, during an arduous uphill hike or the strangling chaos of grief at the passing of a loved one, in the brief touch of hands when one passes a tool to the greasy underside of a car, to the raising of voices in a plaintive song about unrequited love or the loneliness of a sailor spiriting home on favoring winds. In the few passing moments when a prayer is raised like a banner over a house afflicted by death, or thanking God simply for the fried chicken and green beans. There we connect as inexorably as atoms of essential molecules, drawn together by an unseen force, to form a bond, a coalition of friendship and family that sustains and nurtures.
And beneath it all, like the soft sighing of wind that lifts the kite to the clouds, unseen, but there nevertheless, this ‘je ne sais quoi’, this divine something, this spirited union that we call Friendship.
So at long last, I come to what I set out to say, that I haven’t really got a clue as to why it exists, when I set aside the purely physical utility, but there it is. We are friends, for better and worse, in difference and in concert, and I hold these two men ever so dear, my brothers John and Richard.
I love you guys.
Outside on the deck, black capped chickadees and downy woodpeckers and their like, cling to the feeders, feasting on sunflower seeds and burrowing beaks into suet in search of bits of fruit and nuts. The light is waning, a thin watery yellow of the westering sun against the leafless maples and oaks, casting long lavender shadows across the brilliant glittering snow. On a walk earlier, I’d watched a pair of horses, geldings, one deep brown, one paint, kick their way through hock deep drifting snow, sending low waves forward from each hoof as they made their way from the far fence edge across to nuzzle my frozen face with big warm soft noses. An exhalation through a pair of nostrils fogged over my glasses momentarily and I was like a near blind man, fumbling my way through a drift to stumble back to the plowed driveway.
One becomes introspective, like I started to say. One thinks of winters past, Christmases past and today I found myself thinking of my older brother John and what had bound us together as friends.
John and I grew up sharing a bedroom, sometimes just him and I, sometimes, depending on how tight quarters were, with our younger brother Richard. So first we were forced into each other’s constant presence. Sometimes that was a good thing, where in we spent hours with board games or books or plastic soldiers, making war across the cheap red throw rugs. And later, as we grew, our games became more intellectual. There was one we had with our pair of dictionaries; one would take the A-M and the other, N-Z, and we’d quiz each other on the meanings of various obscure words. Lying on our wooden bunk beds on a chilly winter day, in Augsburg Germany. It was not for nothing that, later in life, John was called, affectionately, The Walking Dictionary.
At night, sometimes, by the light of illicit flashlights, we’d make animals and other things with shadows on the ceiling. No body part was safe from this game. Sometimes we’d be caught by Mom who ssshhh’d at us and ordered us to sleep. And we snorted and snuffled into our pillows, reckless laughter that threatened to bring in Mom again.
And forced into a constant companionship, even outdoors, we hung together, at least till we entered junior high school.
Sometimes, as ignorant children, we bickered; bitter words that children will hurl thoughtlessly, spurred by envy or a slight or an unintended bump of a knee to a head during a more physical game. Sometimes our companionship was uneasy for this reason and we, with a mother wiser than I’ll ever be, would be sent to the basement “until you can be friends again.” Being younger and smaller, I was disadvantaged, but not always the loser of a squabble. Not always.
Thrown together by necessity, we were also pushed together when I joined the Boy Scouts and my father insisted I be in John’s pack. So when I took the Scout oath, right hand raised with three fingers up and thumb crossed over my pinky on my palm, I joined him again in hiking and knot tying and ax sharpening, sleeping in a pup tent, sleeping closer together than even at home. Even then we shared our camping food and set up our tent together and loaned each other pocket knives to cut rope.
In later years, as adolescence brought hormones and new friends and sharper differences in our ages, we were prised apart as we found our way into our teens. He was more bookish and fond of classical music and I began to lean towards longish hair and hippie rock n roll. The struggles became more verbal as we tried , less and less successfully over time, to share our room. Younger brother Richard was not subject to any of our enmity, being no threat to either of us and several years younger by far.
But then, one shocking fall day John sat Mom down and told her he joined the Air Force and suddenly he was off to basic training and then other training and then Okinawa. And for some reason, we began to correspond. He on yellow legal pads, me on notebook paper. We poured out thoughts of home, popular music, sci fi, and later, after our father died suddenly at 55, of John leaving the Air Force on a hardship discharge and how to get him out .
I think that it was the draft, the selective service system that sealed our friendship. John was already far away, Kadena, Okinawa, Japan and I was I-A for the draft, ready, able and completely unwilling. And on the day I was rejected by the military as unfit to serve, I wrote him a voluminous letter that spelled out my relief, my joy. It was not long after that our father died and John came home for the funeral and eventually was discharged so that he could help with the family. He was a resister within the military and I from without.
I can remember the first time I hugged John. On Dad’s death I volunteered to drive to LAX with Richard to pick John up, and at the gate, tentatively , we wrapped our arms around each other and around our grief for moment. We were a motley trio, John with regulation hair, me with longish curls and Richard with a elderly villager’s bald pate and fringe for his part in the high school’s production of Teahouse of the August Moon. That earned us a few stares when we stopped at Denny’s for breakfast. And to the wide eyed woman, gaping over the booth’s divider, I gave a fish mouth, puckering my lips tightly and waggling them like an oxygen starved tetra at the water’s surface. She ducked down quickly.
And, never one to resist harmless mischief, we posted antiwar rally posters right on the window glass of the Ventura Selective Service Board office. I drove the getaway Bug, and John taped the posters up, brazen for having picked full daylight during business hours.
We spent a few months, hiking together, hanging out with my hippie friends in an loosely knit commune in a narrow, brush choked canyon, Sisar Canyon, that was home to towering sycamores and prickly leaved live oaks, a stream that ran almost year round. Climbed the face of Topa Topa, rocky bluffs that stood over the far east end of Ojai Valley. Nowadays you can ride a mountain bike up on top of it. Hiked into Santa Paula Canyon for a three day, only to be rained out on our first night. Wet fuel, wet clothes and a missed turn sent us back, not discouraged but disappointed. And the classic line from my brother as he departed the tent, folding shovel and TP in hand, “I hate crapping in the wilderness.” Indeed.
Its hard to think of what companionship and friendship are, where they come from, the purpose and what sustains them. Why do any of us have friends? Why is there a spot in our hearts and minds that needs the company of others? Oh, biologically one can see the need for friendship that leads to love and procreation and all that, whether one believes in pure evolution or in creation. But why have friends?
Sometimes I think too hard about these things, in my sixth decade, each year a step more weighted with mortality and physical discomforts. But I yearn, like any man must, for someone who, besides a spouse, understands me fully, having years of history and easy conversation and tea. And later, dark ales and philosophy and reminiscence of times past. Out here in Michigan, so far from the two men I love the most, John and Richard, and being the unwitting victim of, not only distance, but the trauma of having been in a religious cult that devalued such human love as being inferior and undesirable and a distraction, its been a struggle to let any man close to me. Actually its been nearly impossible.
Other than my brothers. God bless them both.
Tears come more easily as I age. I am more sentimental by far. In my youth memorabilia came and went in a blink or a heartbeat or a flick of the wrist as I tossed high school yearbooks into the trash can. Now, I can’t let anything go that reminds me of, links me to another time when I was young and relatively innocent of worldly distractions like sex, drugs, rock and roll.
Just this past summer, in a quiet little sandwich and ale shop in Eugene Oregon, having sandwiches and a brew with my younger brother, Richard, my daughter Jenny, my mother and Sarah, Richard’s ex-wife and still friend. Richard had me close my eyes and when I opened them, there was a relic of my 11th year, a Japanese version, over sized, of the Swiss army knife. Fork, spoon, corkscrew, screwdriver-bottle opener, can opener, scissors, saw, and blade melded between two fake pieces of animal horn and held securely in a leather pouch made for a belt.
Tears welled up instantly. I could not believe what I saw, there on the table cloth with my name printed in my mother’s hand, black permanent marker on the back side of the pouch. Chuck. A relic of, a memory of hikes through towering pines in Bavaria, a frozen winter camp in a giant army surplus tent with tan sub-arctic sleeping bags, prickly with feathers, and olive drab air mattresses that turned soggy at night with leaks despite endless patching. Scrambled eggs and bacon cooked in a stainless steel mess kit over a gasoline stove.
And so the tears welled up and threatened to spill down my cheeks, my eyelids near to over flowing with hot tears, my cheeks flushed, my throat welling up, my voice failing me. I could only reach out and hug him and utter profound thanks over and over.
Why? Why is friendship so important? Why are we not all islands of independence, stiff arming intimacy, shrouded and armored from anything resembling loneliness and the sense of isolation. Why are we not all, as Paul Simon said “a rock, an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries”?
There is a design that cannot be, I think, explained by evolution. A fortuitous mix of part emotion, part intellect, part physical and part spirit that for no other reason, created by God because it pleased Him to see us care for and about and with each other. Sure, one could say that the utility of friendship is purely biological, a survival reflex, a progeny producing relationship twixt man and woman, a gathering of strong muscles and quick reflexes that protects and defends the vulnerable and elevates the strong to leadership. But it seems to go so much deeper, nurtured there in the hours over a pot of tea or a bottle of wine, during an arduous uphill hike or the strangling chaos of grief at the passing of a loved one, in the brief touch of hands when one passes a tool to the greasy underside of a car, to the raising of voices in a plaintive song about unrequited love or the loneliness of a sailor spiriting home on favoring winds. In the few passing moments when a prayer is raised like a banner over a house afflicted by death, or thanking God simply for the fried chicken and green beans. There we connect as inexorably as atoms of essential molecules, drawn together by an unseen force, to form a bond, a coalition of friendship and family that sustains and nurtures.
And beneath it all, like the soft sighing of wind that lifts the kite to the clouds, unseen, but there nevertheless, this ‘je ne sais quoi’, this divine something, this spirited union that we call Friendship.
So at long last, I come to what I set out to say, that I haven’t really got a clue as to why it exists, when I set aside the purely physical utility, but there it is. We are friends, for better and worse, in difference and in concert, and I hold these two men ever so dear, my brothers John and Richard.
I love you guys.
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