Clearly for the First Time

Tonight I was moon walking in the kitchen. Jake and I taught ourselves how to do it on the slippery vinyl floor in the bedroom he and Kris shared. We lived in a modern log cabin, about three miles outside of a tiny little rural community in South Central Idaho. I don’t know why his room had vinyl flooring. It also had a whole wall of shelves, or pigeon holes, as we called them. I hadn’t ever considered it before, but I guess it was originally intended as a storage room.

It’s been over 25 years since we moved from there. In all that time, I have only been back twice. Both times were within a year or two of leaving there and both times I was just driving through on my way to somewhere else.

Actually, one of those times we did stop for a little while. It was about a year after we had moved away. My dad had picked Jake and me up for the summer. We wanted to see the old house. While we were there we dug up the box of hidden treasures we left for the next family to find.

Before we had moved away, we carefully hid this box in the rocky area on the sloping hill below the house. This had been our favorite play area in both summer and winter. Here we had spent many hours playing together.

To help the new residents find the box, I drew a treasure map of sorts and crammed it between two logs in the outside wall of my bedroom. I guess no one ever found the map.

After taking a look at the stuff: a few small toys and an old tennis ball, we buried the box back where we found it. I haven’t been back since.

After we moved away, I quickly lost track of anyone from there that meant anything to me. I’ve meant to go back many times, but just never did. I guess I never had a good enough reason.

I’ve thought a lot about our time there. Cody was born there. Kris was just a little kid. I think he was in Kindergarten and first grade. Lately I’ve thought seriously about going back for a visit. I don’t think I would look anybody up. I was just a kid myself, and it was a long time ago. I don’t suspect many people would even remember me. Mostly I would want to see a few of the old haunts from those years: the store where my mom’s second husband worked, the Chinese restaurant where my friend, Herman, and his family worked and also lived in a small apartment in the back, and the church where we would go every Sunday for meetings and every Tuesday evening for youth activities.

The old Junior High School, where I spent so much of my time as a young teenager, is gone now. I only know that because of the street level pictures on Google Maps. As you look right and click the cursor to the northwest along Locust Street, all you see is a barren spot of ground where the old building once was. This is where learned I loved making art, where I learned about writing, where I took photos as the yearbook photographer, and where I first got the nerve to ask someone to be my girlfriend.

I would also like to drive down the main drag, Broadway Avenue, as it makes it’s long, angled run from one corner of town to the other. The first time I rode in a car down this stretch of road, boasting the one and only stop light in the entire town, I dropped something on the floor just as we passed the downtown area. I found it and looked up just as my mother asked what we thought of downtown. In those few seconds of rummaging on the floor of our car, I had completely missed all of it.

The next time I drive that road, I will pay more attention through the middle of town. I will look especially hard for the small optometrist’s office where, for the first time in my life, I saw clearly. I vividly remember putting on my glasses for the very first time and looking out into the street through the large glass windows on the front of the doctor’s office. There, on the far side of the street, I could clearly make out the details of the Ropers clothing store. Later that night, I stood outside my house in the dark and marveled at the billions of stars in the sky above. Before that day, I didn’t know I couldn’t see.

But even with my new glasses I couldn’t see what damage I was causing to my second brother, Kris. Something changed between him and me in this little town. At first things were fine. He was a great little kid and we all got along great. In no time at all that was all gone.

Maybe part of it was that he was still a little kid and I was suddenly in my early teens. Maybe part of it was that I was jealous of him and the relationship he had with his dad.

I was the hard-to-understand-step-child, while Kris was his dad’s “Little Buddy.” He was “Little Skiing Buddy, Little Boating Buddy, Little Work Buddy,” and more. I admit I resented it. And, sadly, Kris, who deserved it least, was the one that felt the brunt of my resentment and frustration. Not that I ever took it out on him physically; that would have been too dangerous for me. No, I took it out on him in far worse, far more damaging ways; Kris was my target for alienation, for taunting, and at times, even for ridicule. For many reasons, real and imagined, I hated his dad, and Kris paid the price for that hatred.

Though we eventually overcame our differences, Kris and I never really became the friends I wish we could have been. We never had enough time to grow up and get to know each other as adults. I never got the chance to apologize to him for all the hurt I had caused him.

It was ten years ago today that he took his last breath. In the days after Kris died, I spent many hours on my knees, begging to be forgiven for the damage I caused to my brother, damage that changed the very course of his life, damage that indirectly lead to his untimely death.

There are so many analogies in this little, loaded essay that might be applied to my relationship with this brother. In fact, each analogy could probably also be applied, respectively, to the relationships I have with each of my brothers, and perhaps even my sons. But on this anniversary, ten long years since he left us, each analogy seems to me only a trite cliché that reaches for something that can never be had between Kris and I, and, perhaps something that does not need to be had.

I believe Kris has forgiven me. I believe too, that God has forgiven me as well. But, I also know that if was to alienate another person in the way I did Kris, I would never be able to forgive myself again. Now is the time to forever close the circle of anger, frustration and hatred that started in this small town in Idaho. Now is the time to begin a new tradition, based on love, caring, and selfless acceptance of the ideas, actions and individualities of the persons in my life today.

Someday I will go back to the small town where I first lost my brother Kris. I would like to again explore the rocky hills and open fields where we played together as children. But, in reality, I know already what I’ll find there, buried in the soil of my memories; little tidbits to guide me through my life. And from those treasured remembrances, I will draw lessons, which I hope always will help me understand my life more clearly.