Signs of the Times

36 Weeks

"Careful you don't fall through, Dad."

"How about this?"

"What?"

"You want THIS?"

"Wow. I haven't seen that in... wow..."

I'm standing at the bottom of a ladder under the attic opening inside the house where Greg grew up. Mom sent Greg up there to see if we could use anything for the baby. Greg went hunting thinking he'd find old Star Wars treasure. Dad went up to prove what he kept telling his wife, "there's nothing up there but dirt and old stuff." We came home with a few rusty toy cars and Greg's first stuffed animal: a late 60's brown and yellow teddy bear named "Teddy Bear", so loved and worn the Velveteen Rabbit would have screamed with jealousy.

"F*&K. YOU."

"It's hard to text like this. Please answer your phone."

"You just want to control me...
     F*&K. OFF."

"You called me first! Please stop hanging up! I just want to help. We all do. No strings attached.
     Hello?...
          They have money for you...
               Hello?..."

"How much?"

"Enough to rent a room if you find one and some for a little food...
     Where should I send it?
          Hello?...
               I hope you are OK. Please don't leave the hospital yet. Let them help you.
                     Hello?...
                          Good luck...
                                I love you."

My brother is in trouble. Real trouble. It's difficult to know—the little bits that I'm privy to every few months or so. For years I've seen the worst coming, but no one can predict the path of a comet. You pray that rare personality he was blessed with ends up a beautiful galactic event rather than one of the billions of dead stars, burnt out quickly before his or her time. He was born a ball of uncontrollable fire and hasn't let up since. Tough to maintain in one human vessel. In the past four years, I'm the only family member he'll connect with and those rare connections quickly evolved into poorly masked pleas for help. I feel it's an honor. I do whatever I can but I'm a useless joke compared to what he needs and he knows it. It's a burden loving someone so much. I selfishly wish I didn't sometimes and my complaints here are NOTHING to compare with what he goes through on a daily basis. He's had to fight to keep his comet lit since he first opened his eyes. One-on-one battles with the evilest of fear and isolation. In many ways he's a hero, but it's taking it's toll now.

After getting Greg's first stuffed animal washed and stitched, I decided "Teddy Bear" should meet my first stuffed animal, a psychedelic black and purple monkey named "Purple Monkey". Perhaps they'd be cute together in our new little guy's nursery. So I asked Greg to go down to the basement and help me open a couple of boxes wrapped in plastic that contained some precious books of Greg's and the contents of my childhood memories. He went to lift one and it mushed together like a bag full of lead dough. The basement flood. It happened over a month ago. We've been down in there almost every day since things were cleaned up—taking care of garbage, recycling, lawn equipment, laundry. We've walked past unwanted furniture and crooked picture frames not caring they were water damaged—we were going to throw them out anyway.  But those boxes...

Greg peeled apart a few layers from the dough. Everything was ruined—a hole in the plastic on the underside of the box and the flood got to it after all. A package of flashbacks just sautéing for days on end, in the wet and heat of a country basement. I got choked up when I found what looked like my ancient art portfolio melted beyond salvation between two pieces of leather. Old ribbons and letters and keepsakes. A note from my best friend, Stephanie, on the back of a sign language chart. We loved to try and sign messages across classrooms to each other. Greg's books and my memories looked like a bag of lumpy oatmeal covered in a few trophies and mold. Science. Neat. I found a stack of 30 year old pictures molded together. Mush. And then another stack with some that looked salvageable. A vintage image of my newly born, baby brother right on top. It was so bizarrely appropriate for everything in my little world right now. Loss and ending chapters and the start of new and exciting ones. Couldn't have been more obvious a statement of transitioning times than if I'd dreamt it on Freud's own couch. I stood there in the basement and sobbed for the first time in a long time. Greg held me and then pushed my shoulders back and gleefully looked me in the eye, "None of this matters. Look around. We are making amazing memories right now."

I am such a lucky woman.

Teddy Bear and Purple Monkey are going to have adorably weird babies.