Don't Mess With Him - You'll Answer to Me

Forty-eight years ago on November 20, I woke up in the middle of the night to find my grandmother in my double bed next to me. “Your mother went to the hospital,” she reported, when I wondered what she was doing there. A few hours later, the phone rang, and my father announced, “You have a little brother.” My sister and I were ecstatic. A boy was unusual in my family so this would be a novel experience. I had little idea at the time how novel it was to be.

I was 9 years old and this was my first real experience with a baby. My brother was pudgy and cute and he didn’t cry very much. I learned to change and feed him and didn’t think anything about it when he didn’t crawl until he was over a year old, take a step until almost two, and wouldn’t eat table food until he was four.  When I was 12, a “friend” told me that another girl who was the “neighborhood nasty” had said that my family was trying to hide my brother because there was something wrong with him. She whispered the word, “mongoloid.”  I was crushed. Why would we try to hide such a cute little guy? In a rare expression of feeling, I went home crying and told my parents who reassured me that the “neighborhood nasty” was being true to her reputation and that they certainly were not trying to hide him.

I recovered but became super over-protective. More than once, seeing behavior that led me to believe another kid was enroute to taking advantage of him, I sped through the house, leaped out the door and screamed at those kids to stop whatever it was they were doing. And over the years, I perfected a glare that warned, “Don’t mess with him or you’ll answer to me.”  I still pull it out from time to time.  

My brother has provided my family and those who know him well with 48 years of adventure, laughs, and occasional high blood pressure. Although incapable of distinguishing between left and right, up and down, or over and under, especially in moments when I need him to follow directions because I have my thumb in a dike and can’t move, he can hook up a VCR/DVD player in no time flat. My mother once stared in disbelief at his handiwork when she realized that he had switched his broken VCR with her working VCR without her knowledge. He also is smart enough to have figured out that if he removes a certain piece from the top of the doors in his group home, the bells that signal someone’s arrival and/or exit will be deactivated. He also figured out how to de-alarm the fire system because it made too much noise and awakened him in the middle of the night for fire drills.

My brother can find nothing you want him to find, but he has perfected his disappearing act so nobody can find him! Trust me when I say he’s good at it. Even the bloodhounds would agree.  

    

My brother says the funniest things. Every time he walks through the front door of his group home, he calls out, “Oh honey, I’m home!” as if he were on the set of Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best. Although some things he says are clear, his speech is often difficult to understand. Since many words sound the same coming out of his mouth, it’s often a guessing game to figure out what he is saying. Sometimes he helps us by spelling (yes, you read that correctly). He tells me that somebody at his group home made him a strawberry lello cake for his birthday. A lello cake, I think, my mind quickly making associations. A yellow cake? No, he says, a LELLO cake, J-E-L-L-O. Ah, a strawberry jello cake.  He tells me about a DVD he wants, Wicka. Wicka, I think, drawing an absolute blank. Wicker? Wicked? I try a few variations and he’s only frustrated with my inability to get it. “F-L-I-C-K-A” he spells as if I am daft. Oh!  Flicka, I say, triumphantly. Yes, “Wicka” he repeats. Okay.

My brother has unbelievable rhythm and all the right moves which he has learned from movies and Sha Na Na.  He is also as light on his feet and as debonair as Fred Astaire. He plays no favorites on the dance floor and the girls all love him. The staff at ARC refers to his harem with a laugh. Look for the crowd on the dance floor- my brother will be in the middle of it. He dances every dance and will be the last one on the floor at the end of the night, bowing graciously to the band or the DJ in thanks before he makes his grand exit.

My brother is meticulous about some things – a slob about others. On the one hand, his ability to fold clothes rivals that of any GAP employee. He even folds his dirty laundry as if it were going straight to a drawer instead of the laundry bin. On the other hand, his room is littered with random papers, empty juice bottles, and lone unmatched socks. It drives me insane.  But as I stand in a grocery store pondering the store brand vs. a name brand, he is busy straightening up the cans or boxes on the shelves - perfectly.

My brother takes great photographs and he bowls a better game than I do almost every time.

My brother walks at least 3 steps behind no matter how slowly I go. “Can’t you walk a little faster, D,” I’ll sputter in exasperation when I’m in a hurry. “Come on feet, hurry up,” he’ll command, immediately changing my mood from frustrated to laughing.  

My brother has a memory like an elephant. He remembers that I had spinach pie at a restaurant a year before and has in mind to order the same thing when we go back. He remembers the one DVD or video that was on his Christmas list that you couldn’t find/buy. At the mention of a long-dead relative, he’ll tell you the year of his/her birth (even if it was in the 1890s), and what their phone number was when they were alive – even if they died 20 years ago. But he doesn’t always remember to comb his hair, change his socks, or put on a belt.

I picked my brother up on Saturday morning, November 20, from his group home in western New York to head back to NYC where we would celebrate Thanksgiving and his birthday. I went in his room to check on his packing. For seven days, he had neatly (think GAP) assembled 7 pair of underwear, 10 undershirts, 9 pair of socks, 12 pair of long pants, and 3 shirts. It was hard to not laugh. I edited the pants and increased the shirts and before long, we were on our way. As we pulled out of the driveway, he looked at me, grinned, and said, “Hit the road, Jack.”

Somewhere between Dansville and Corning, he peered out the windshield up at the clear blue sky, then settled back in his seat. “Well, mom,” he said. “My birthday is today. I am 48 years old.” A lump threatened my throat. I promised my mom moments before she drew her last breath that I would take care of him. I glanced over at my passenger. “I’m sure mom knows it’s your birthday today, honey,” I said. “And I’m sure she is happy because she knows we are on our way to New York City together.” He reached over and patted my shoulder reassuringly.  “I am happy too,” he said.