Digging Deep and Reaching Out

"Down the Shore" is the ultimate fantasy pleasure experience for any Tri-State native worth their saltwater taffy. So when my Mom married her second husband, George, who in retirement owned two stores on the boardwalk at Pt. Pleasant Beach = one on the north end and one on the south end across from Jenkinson’s Pavilion = us kids, who were now adults with the beginnings of our own families, thought we’d hit the mother lode.

George’s stores were the kinds we were never allowed to enter let alone spend money in when we were kids. He sold air ferns growing out of seashells, little wallets with pictures of New Jersey on them and a star where Pt. Pleasant Beach was located, and = his personal favorite= the dogless leash. A firm piece of wire with plastic wrapped around it, the thing was angled so it looked like there was an invisible dog walking along. He chuckled every time someone laid a great wad of cash down to purchase one.

His inventory was called ‘schlock’ when we were kids. Now that we were related to someone selling such stuff, we called them ‘souvenirs’. Everything is in context.

On this fall day, the context of hearing, "Live from Pt. Pleasant Beach’ over and over brought no warm, fuzzy memory of row upon row of rocking chairs overlooking the surf at the Pavilion, nor a desire to go look at the various sweatshirts, t-shirts and terry clothe training underpants that had ‘My Grandpa thinks I’m cute at Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ" tucked away in the green footlocker for the next generation of grandchildren to wear.

No, "Live from Pt. Pleasant Beach…." Brought an uneasy fear into my heart. I had not heard from my little brother in Philadelphia for twenty-four hours. There was no response to my text, "Did you all make it through the night OK". The voices of the newscasters reminded me only that he and his family, like hundreds of thousands of others, were smack dab in the middle of the path of destruction of a monster hurricane.

The last message I had received said, "Power keeps going on and off (here at work). Closing up shop and going home."

Finally late Tuesday, after hours that dragged by like centuries, I saw the words pop up on my phone: "Force fields working well. Trees down everywhere but on the house and shop."

My little brother and his family were safe. The two big trees that came down had missed the house and the workshop behind the house by one foot each. Nothing but lightweight branches that did no damage but add debris to the roofs of each.

It would have broken my heart beyond measure for harm to have come to him or his. You see we have only recently reunited. Torn apart by our family’s dysfunctional history and reality we did the only thing we could to endure the tensions. We stopped talking.

Six years older than he I remember him coming home from the hospital, his brush with death at two when his appendix ruptured and he was literally minutes away from leaving us all early, his companionship as we grew, the ever present joking and laughter, adventures helping dad build the ‘DebLeeDo", a folding boat he had discovered in Popular Mechanics, and most of all my resolve when I first met him to treat him differently than I had been treated. I wanted to treat him with gentleness and affirmation.

My relationship with my little brother changed the course of my life. I became a teacher and work with children today because I loved being a big sister. Every relationship or foray into a relationship I’ve had with a man since my divorce has been screwed up because I was looking for my brother not a mate. My brother and I were, are, soul mates like out of some great Southern novel where the siblings confide secrets to each other while they dangle their legs from branches of a moss covered willow tree.

Then one day, after years of silence I missed him too much, found my sister in law on Facebook and sent her a message. "Tell him I love him and miss him." She wrote right back. "He does too." She arranged a telephone call. It was the sweetest ever, and while we now are so old we look like our mother and father, the core of our carefree friendship and sweet, innocent optimistic spirits remains entwined.

Both us had to do some digging deep. We wrestled individually and agreed when we talked that at first we only wanted to acknowledge the wrestlings, not discuss them. Then he shared some things that revealed to me how he felt when I left for Europe my senior year of high school. Some people take drugs or drink; I travel and go to new places. In the decades since I had never realized how much I meant to my brother and I vowed to never leave him again.

There will be lots of gimme letters in this holiday season of end of the year tax deductions. They will ask you to dig deep and reach out. That’s great. Certainly do that. But after you have written your check, ask yourself ‘Who do I miss? Whose loving presence did I let slip away because I didn’t know how to stay in relationship at the time? Who do I now want to see?" Then pick up the phone or turn on your computer and find them and be the first to reach out.

I can’t even tell you how whole and wonderful and peaceful and never again out of balance or ungrounded my life will be because I found my brother and summoned all my courage to contact him and tell him I loved him. I’m just not me without the chance to be a big sister. Next to being a mom, it’s my favorite role. It’s why I became, "The Deborah" to so many children. I loved loving my brother, still do.

Thank you God for most this amazing brother. May the force be with us! – Inside joke of course.

Love, your sister Debby