Lost in Time and Space

I lost my brother when we were ice skating one time on the fields the city iced over during winter. They opened up a building that had benches with cubby holes where we'd change our shoes then chop our way out the door and out to the ice. They always put up a hockey rink, too, right next to the open ice but we didn't go in there much. I guess people actually played hockey in there but I don't remember seeing them much.

There were four kids in our family, all within five years from oldest to youngest. After stopping at two myself, I have no idea how my mother dealt with it all. Especially since we didn't get along all that well. I'm sure we did in the beginning, back in those times we can't exactly remember, but mostly what comes to mind were the petty fights and resentments. My younger sister used to get me in trouble by saying I hit her when I hadn't. My mom would prove it by having her show me the red marks on her back but it was still a lie. My sister must have rubbed her back against the door frame or something because sure as hell those marks were there, I just never had anything to do with them.

I finally got so sick of it I took a pair of scissors and gouged a nasty track all along one side of one of her record albums. It was a mean gesture, no question about it, but I didn't figure all that many ways to get myself heard at that point. If anyone was listening, they weren't believing. I never heard a squeak about that record scratch. As far as I know, my sister never played that record again and my bad deed went unnoticed. Then one day, weeks or months later, I felt so bad about it I bought a new one and replaced the mutilated one, again without telling a soul. Never heard about that, either.

My brother I did hit, I'm ashamed to say. Not a lot, and not excessively, just a blow to the stomach or shoulder now and again when he really got on my nerves. I know he used to lose pieces to every game and toy he ever touched but troublesome as that was it was never the reason. Other than vague recollections of taunting on his part, I don't have any idea why it ever happened. Still, though, we hung out at least a little bit, and did a few things together.

Until the day at the ice rink. There was a kid there who insisted on skating around and around wearing a black stocking cap even though it was a well known fact that he'd go absolutely ape-shit if someone skated by and plucked it from his head. As soon as he got it back, he'd calm himself like it never happened and keep skating the same random figures we all did. I'm eternally ashamed that I stole his hat a couple of times myself. I may even have done it in front of my brother on that one day I'm talking about.

We grew up in the city where there were a lot of kids. Lots of kids means lots of cliques and bullies. There were shy kids and outgoing kids and kids that played sports and kids that got into trouble with adults. And there were kids that liked to fight.

Other than a few group-think induced instances like the hat thievery from the smaller boy at the skating rink, I was never a bully. And I was lucky to be big enough that I was never a bully's victim. But as I recall there were a group of kids in my grade that I didn't really get along with but that I didn't really care about one way or the other. Some of these kids were on the ice that day and somehow, some way, I ended up in a snowbank at the side of the ice faced off with a number of them.

We weren't fighting, though. I certainly wasn't mad or upset or I probably would have fought. I really don't recall the circumstances, though, if I were pushed or had fallen or if my sitting in the snow had anything whatsoever to do with the presence of those other boys. But I do recall that a fight could have happened, perhaps should have happened when I look back on it, but didn't, merely because I didn't feel like it. My whole life I found it difficult to fight if I wasn't angry or upset or hated somebody. I was never scared of fighting, not ever. Instead I just tended to laugh at someone and tell them okay, whatever, now go away. I did get into fights over the years but that was when the other person really wanted to fight and really made me mad.

So on that day, I was sitting in the snow for some reason, being challenged by a couple of kids I didn't like for some reason, and I declined to get into a fight for some reason. They skated off, I got up; another day in the life of a fifth grade boy. But I remember something else, and this I remember more clearly than anything else: the way my little brother looked at me. He was in the second grade at that point. Lord knows what he thought of the big brother that took him skating and goofing off down by the creek and occasionally hauled off and slugged him one but from that point on it was something different.

Somewhere along the way, we hung out less and less. He took up with his friends, I took up with mine. I didn't like his friends or the things they did and seemed to get away with, and I stopped having any idea what he thought of me. But I knew I'd lost him and there wasn't any going back, not at that age.

Today I don't know him any better than I did back then. We see each other every few years and are at least as polite as folks who see each other time after time in the same breakfast cafe, say, yet with much more distance. I still see the kid with the same mind set and same friends (literally) that he had back then, the same things I didn't approve of then and have no business passing on judgment on now. I have no idea what he thinks of when he sees me. It's sad because this gap is tangible, obvious, and, I believe, unbridgeable.

Last year his beloved dog passed away and after my mother told me about it, I went out to the store and got some stationery so I could scribble out a condolence and send it off to him. I've lost my share of dogs in my life and the one thing I know about him is that he cared for his boy like I care for mine. I sent the card and never heard from him. And still, when I think of that, I remember that day long ago in the city of Minneapolis, a block or so from our house on the public skating rink, when I could have gotten into a harmless scuffle with some punk kid who almost certainly has no memory of that time, that day, or even me. I wonder if anything, anything at all, would have turned out differently in any way that matters. I wonder what my brother thought, and how he felt. Did he think I was afraid? Did he think I wasn't somehow the big brother he thought I was? Does he even remember?

My guess is that he doesn't but I don't know. I don't what he's thinking now any more than I did back then and there's no way to ever know. Odds are that at some point, a funeral or something unpleasant to contemplate will bring us into contact again. I'm sure we'll shake hands, mutter something forgettable, and return to our lives. The ones we somehow chose for ourselves without knowing better, perhaps as far back as that winter day in grade school. Some memories would perhaps be nicer to forget.