Family is a complex puzzle, not just to me, but to almost everyone I know. I drove to Massachusetts today with Maria to have dinner with my brother. It was a hard trip and an important trip. My brother left our house when I was very young, and I have only seen him a few times in recent years, the last time at my wedding with Maria. Before that, it was perhaps 15 or 20 years since we had seen one another.

I think the distance was my fault more than his, although neither of us really fought to stay connected. Too much heavy water, I think. I didn’t really know my brother well, or his family, and I was angry at him for things that happened that were not his fault. I often wondered about having a Big Brother and was never comfortable at letting mine slip away. So when he called to invite me to visit him, I readily agreed, and we had dinner. He is a Good Man, my brother, I can see that, easygoing and accomplished and busy and  generous and very different from me. I heard about things that were hard for me to hear about, and I could hardly breathe in the car on the way back.

Family is a shroud that hangs over us, and it is a puzzle I think I shall never really solve. You can’t divorce family, or walk away from it, it is like sawing off a part of yourself. Everybody has their own ideas and memories about family, and I don’t wish to share mine here. I was happy to see my brother, and for awhile, in the car, I imagined what might have been. My brother reminded me of the time that some kids in the neighborhood were chasing me and he ran out and drove them off. I like that memory, and will think of that when I think of my brother, living his life well and fully and far away.

I have learned recently not to see my life as a struggle, or to relate it in that way. Everybody’s life is a struggle, in one way or the other, even though we often think of others as having it easy, and mostly I look ahead, not back.

When did you start taking photographs, he asked me? Five or six years ago, I said.

“You’re good,” he said, and I was proud my brother thought that of my photos. He said he was never artistic himself, but then he told me about a cherry wood desk he had made himself a couple of years ago, and his face lit up when he talked about it. I hope he sents me a photo of it.