lonelyI love Brad, but I don't really think he loves me. It's not that he doesn't love me, either, it's just something that doesn't cross his mind. I think he's still pissed because when we were kids, he always wanted to play with me, but I was your classic older sister who wanted the bratty little brother to leave me alone. Sometimes we did play nicely, with Legos and Construx. Those are perhaps my fondest childhood memories. I wish we had done that more often.
But now the shoe is on the other foot, and Brad's got no interest in his spoiled older sister. I talk to his girlfriend more than I talk to him. Every year or two we'll have a long brother-sister talk, but those are much further apart than I'd like.
But we're on the phone, so I ask him how he feels about this week.
"Not really anything. Mad, but nothin' else."
It reminded me of this picture of my family which I have in a cheap little frame. It was taken in Florida in front of the Jupiter Island lighthouse. Mom's just happy to be at a lighthouse. Dad, so charming to strangers and so strange to his own family, is smiling too. I'm cute and perky and thin, this photo being taken before my metabolism gave up and went south for the winter. And Brad? Tall, wearing sunglasses, expressionless... an enigma.
I just find it so strange that Brad is biologically my closest relative, the closest I'll ever have, and yet he and I are really strangers to one another.
