He’s Not Heavy, He’s My Brother

Contrary to an average person’s logic, the best gift my parents ever gave me was not the twin Cabbage Patch dolls, Adlai and Stevenson, who could grip crayons in their chubby wired-cloth fingers and were presented to me in a red two-seater stroller with pinstripes and a retractable canopy. The best present was actually my little brother, named, I proudly announced to complete strangers at the grocery store, in fine dining establishments, and in public restrooms, after the little circus mouse in Dumbo. After being an only child for what must have been two and a half excruciatingly long years for anyone who had to listen to Little Lisa, The Screaming “Me, Me, Me” day in and day out, I finally had some company, some cameraderie, a confidante, a partner in crime.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t the best partner a criminal toddler could have, being that time and time again I duped the poor kid into raiding the cereal cabinet, harvesting the snow peas out of the garden against the rules, and sneaking upstairs to see what Santa had brought me, only to blame him for any and all wrongdoing if/when we got caught. That’s what little brothers are for, right? Well, yes, of course that’s what they’re for. But that doesn’t mean I needed to abuse the privelege as often and as undiscriminately as I did.

Thinking back on our childhood, especially knowing my brother as I know him today, I find it baffling that I got away with treating him like I did. The reason it doesn’t make sense is that he’s absolutely brilliant. Really. Here’s a little slice of genius he posted on his blog today. Um, yeah. There’s no way this kid didn’t know what I was up to when I tricked him into whitewashing that fence…

All I can figure is that he let me get away with everything I did. Why? Because I think he liked me. I also think he knew my parents could see through my little charade (pronounced char-ODD) and knew he couldn’t possibly have masterminded such evil deeds alone. And also I think he, like Dylan, has some sort of superhuman ability to put up with me at my worst moments, which are those times when I think I can get away with acting like a complete brat. I hereby bestow secular sainthood on them both. (And yes, that involves the donning of origami pope hats.)

So here’s wishing my baby bro a happy happy 22nd. Thanks for always letting me be who I am and for always being who you are, even when we sometimes end up being two people no one in their right mind would want anything to do with. Thanks for letting me dress you up (a fate that shall now forever be reserved solely for defenseless cats), for letting me sing lullabies through the slats of your crib at three in the morning, and for making me–selfish, self-centered me–glad I had such a talented co-star in the musical comedy that was my childhood. It’s your birthday; go have a popover, froggie!

Here’s to you, bub, looking super slick and precociously surly in your Cool Commander sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses that, soon after this photo was taken, slipped off your head and fell into one of Yellowstone’s natural wonders.

25 Oct
2003

Posted in: Photos, Regular Entries
By Leah

1 Comment

Circle of Friends

I’ve never had a huge group of friends, rather preferring to have one or two intimates I can hang out with all the time and never get sick of. When I like a person I really really like him (it’s hardly ever a “her”) and can’t seem to get enough. Two of the people I could never be in danger of having enough of–especially since I’ve only seen them a handful of times in the last six years–are my two best friends, Ben and Brandin.

Ben and I go back to seventh grade. If ever two people were separated at birth, we are they. We met Brandin in high school, bonding over Jesus Christ Superstar because (1) we all appreciated its musical genius and its biting social commentary regarding the origins and practice of Christianity, blah, blah, blah, and (2) we saw that it offended all the Mormon kids and found that quite delightfully hilarious. Soon after, we formed a suspiciously tight circle and earned ourselves the label “the Trinity.” With our raw power, we struck fear into the hearts of everyone at Hillcrest High School, oh yes. This not only led to the conflation of our already well-developed god complexes, but it also lent itself to some weighty symbolic poetry, the kind only a high school girl could conjure. I will spare you.

After much fun and much drama, much listening to minimalist music for hours on end, much watching of the world’s weirdest movies, and many sleepless coed slumber parties much to the dismay of some parents, Ben went off to Harvard (oh, imagine the poetry that inspired!) and Brandin and I stayed in Salt Lake, where we barely saw each other because, well, Dylan happened. In the last six years we’ve made an effort to get together on holidays and summer vacations, whenever the three of us happen to be in town at the same time, which never happens as much as it should.

But although this all seems to be going down the road of how things will never be the same, they actually are the same. Freakishly so. When we three get in a room together, there’s this electric current, a completed circuit that generates the most tremendous chemistry, if I may mix such a cloudy metaphoric cocktail.

We’re never at a loss, never shrouded in uncomfortable silence, never awkward and obsessed with how much we’ve changed and how little we know each other anymore. So not The Big Chill. And it’s not like we’re back in high school again (and I send a personal thanks to J. C. Superstar himself for that), but like we’ve never been apart. Sure, we regress a little, gossip a little, give each other hell for past offenses a little, but in the end it’s like we’ve been growing up with each other all these years after all.

After three years in Boston, one in Rome, two in New York, and summers in Germany and who knows where else, Ben started grad school at Berkeley and now lives five minutes away from us. Brandin’s been with a professional dance company in Salt Lake for a little over three years, and last night performed at Stanford, about an hour away. After an awesome show in which Brandin did his thing, starring in little more than flesh-colored mesh briefs, we went out to the only place in Palo Alto open past ten on a Friday night and probably broke some laws by simply being out and about in the city past midnight. We ended the evening at the chi-chi Sheraton, where I spent an hour stroking the I-can’t-believe-it’s-actually-cotton monogrammed pillows, Dylan went at the complementary Starbucks coffee like a wino to a mini bar, and Teddy (I can’t get enough of you either, man) was this close from trying to catch koi with his finger as bait. On the long drive home I smiled to think what handsome bridesmaids my boys will be.

To start off with, four pictures that are unrelated to this post but sure are pretty:

Driving across the Dumbarton Bridge(as seen in Harold and Maude, a movie I first saw with Ben and Brandin:

Ooooh:

Aaaah:

University Ave. in Palo Alto, just barely breathing at 7 pm on a Friday night = the everything University Ave. in Berkeley is not: khaki, klean, korporate. (There are more Ks I could mention, but three is usually enough for these people, no?)

The bathroom at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium that was so unnecessarily large that I couldn’t ignore the voices that echoed between its cavernous marble walls as they begged me to take a picture, even if a photograph could never do it full justice: