HEY BIG BROTHER

   While going through some old photos the other day, my wife Andrea found some we had taken at the Old Tiger Stadium.  At the time, we had a camera that would shoot long photos, so that you could produce sweeping vistas.  We did so at The Corner on the second to last game played on that hallowed ground.

   It made me think of my older brother Mike.

   Like many first borns, this guy is a high achiever.  He is a much loved professor at Purdue University, published author and smartest guy I know (damn him).  But more importantly to me, he is a great older brother who took interest in my growing up. 

   Just not at first.  In my early years, I was way more interested in Mike than he was in me.  He was the rebel of St. Francis Xavier, the captain of the football team, the guy who might graduate just because the nuns were sick of his bullshit.  It sounded good to me.

   Then he went away.  Four years in the Air Force.  When he returned, things were different between us.  He acknowledged me and became a person I wanted to please.  It was important that he like me, that I do things he thought were cool.  The next years together were amongst my favorites.  

   When I was a ninth grader at Stout Junior High (it was so long ago that it was called junior high, not middle school and contained grades 7-9), Mike showed up for every football game I played.  He always made sure I saw him in the crowd and supported me even when I played poorly (like when I was flagged for repeated unsportsmanlike and late hit penalties in one game, not my finest moment).  Seeing him on the sidelines with my Mom and brother Tony always meant a great deal to me.

   Mike also loved going to sporting events and always made sure to include Tony and I in the festivities.  I recall going to a Red Wing game at the old Olympia and sticking around after the game to watch the players leave the dressing room.  Mike was frantic, pushing me from player to player to get autographs.  At the end of the day, his guidance and my willingness to push through any size crowd netted signatures from Gordie Howe, Alex Delvicchio, Roger Crozier, Hank Bassen, Gary Bergman and other Wing greats and not so greats.

   My older brother also loved taking Tony and I to Big Time Wrestling at air conditioned Cobo Arena.  One time, as the days leading up to a much anticipated cage match involving The Sheik drew close, a savage winter storm looked like it would keep the three brothers from attending.  Unlike today’s excitement over a few flakes, this storm was real.  Tony and I were bummed.  We would not get a chance to see The Sheik slap the camel clutch on Big Tex Mckenzie.  Mike wasn’t having it.  He somehow persuaded my Mom to let us go (the same Mom who wouldn’t let me swim in the deep end of the pool until third grade), and off we went in his little VW Bug, shit windshield wipers and balky defroster at the ready.  Somehow we got there on time, even though much of the crowd, some of the wrestlers and, most importantly, the cage did not.  It turned out to be a great night, capped by the late arrival of the cage.  I can’t recall who won the main event, but I will never forget our heroic journey to the match.  

   I literally cannot count the amount of times I walked into Tiger Stadium with Mike.  I recall seeing the good and bad of the Tigers and Lions with an older brother who always loved the home team and stuck around to the bitter end.  And remember, with the Lions and Tigers of the sixties and seventies, it typically ended bitterly.

   But what Mike loves more than anything, what makes him crazier than anything is his beloved University of Michigan.  I have no doubt that his love for Blue is the reason Tony and I still curse the television on Saturdays in the fall.  I recall attending the great 1973 Michigan-Ohio State game featuring two undefeated teams and a shot at the national championship.  Mike was wound up for this big game.  I remember climbing the steps way up in the end zone to get a good look at what we were sure would be the winning Michigan field goal on the last play of the game.  When Mike Lantry’s kick sailed wide, our pact as long suffering Michigan fans was sealed.  From Harry Oliver to Kordell Stewart to follicle challenged Hillbilly Rich Rod (as Tony insists on calling him), our shared pain is a bond that can’t be broken.

   The bond between brothers does not only involve watching sports, but playing them as well.  Mike and I occasionally suited up for the same slow pitch softball team.  One summer night at Ford Woods in Dearborn, our team was trouncing a hated rival (when you play against the thorny teams I played for, pretty much everybody you meet becomes a hated rival) when things began to fall apart.  I was in left field, Mike was in right and good friend John Vellicky was on the mound.  John plays a big role in this story, as he is one of the few people I know as volatile as I am when it comes to competition.  The opposition started giving John shit from the bench when he walked the first batter of the last inning.  As they got louder, John got wilder.  Mix in an error or two, some boneheaded throwing decisions and you get a tie game with a runner on third and one out.  The next batter hit a soft fly to Mike in right field.  I love Mike, but his arm is infantile, and there was no way he was going to throw out the winning run tagging up from third.  He never got a chance to try as the ball popped in and out of his glove while the winning run jogged home.  Our team was totally deflated as we sat on the bench, heads down.  John sat near me and said, quietly at first, “I know you want to yell at me, so go ahead.”  I declined.  A bit louder now.  “No, go ahead and say it.”  I declined again.  “No, everybody’s pissed at me, so say it.”  He got me on the third try.  “All right, I’ll say it.  You’re an asshole.  You let those guys get to you and cost us the game.  It’s your fault.”  Being big in defeat is not my strong suit.  For some reason, my unraveling was too much for Mike to bear, and he left the diamond cursing and sputtering.  As he crossed the side street to his car, he started talking off parts of his uniform and tossing them to the ground.  I saw a cap, jersey, stirrups and pants.  When all was said and done, I the last I saw of him was his 135 pound ass cheeks framed by a ratty jockstrap as they got into his VW Bug for the long ride home.

   It’s not just sports.  Mike loves family and always wants the best for me.  When I was enrolled at Eastern Michigan University, I did a speech about the role placement plays in a sibling’s success.  As stated earlier, Mike is a typical high achieving first born (dick).  Naturally, I asked him to send me a short video explaining how he felt being first born affected his success in life, so that I could use it as the centerpiece of my finals presentation.  Forget what he said, though it was brilliant and on the money.  In the video, he had placed a monitor casually behind him.  Scrolling constantly across the monitor was the sentence, “Jim deserves an A in this class.”  Everybody in that room, including my aged prof got a big bang out it, and I did get an A.

   

   Did I mention that I lived in the apartment below Mike for years?  Or that we worked together on a truck delivering furniture for awhile (nobody injured themselves more than Mike, almost death wish like)  That he showed up early for my son’s graduation party and worked for hours helping set up (my hand to God, he hurt himself nailing up some posters...ahh just like the old days)?  That he was in my wedding party?

In closing:

There once was a brother named Mike

Whose personality I tended to like

But when witnessing his rants

And the dispatching of pants

I put copying him forever on strike

Cheers! Jim 

THE BIG FELLA

   I moved my oldest son Max out of my house and into his first “I’m paying the rent” apartment a couple of weeks ago.  While it is cause for some celebration (lower food bills, more room in a tiny house, reduction in reality shows viewed), my overall feeling was one of sadness.  I’m going to miss the big guy.

   I think I can give you insight into Max with a trifecta of tales from his youth: 

   Library school for all of my children has been at the same facility in Dearborn.  The children are expected to enter the classroom in a line with the other kids, marching and clapping to an appropriately upbeat tune.  How my kids entered the room is a window into their personalities.  Rachel marched tentatively in line, shyly clapping, reluctant but willing to give it a go.  Jackson wildly clapped his hands, never glanced back, ready and able for whatever the world of library school offered.  Max would not go.  Period.  When my Mom called me at work to let me know how things went (she was watching the kids while wife and I worked), it only took a second of her stammering for me to figure that things did not go swimmingly.  She said that Max did not really object to leaving her and heading into the class, but he felt that the forced excitement and clapping was not something he wanted to be a part of.  It took a week of explaining and my cutting out of work to attend the next session to convince the reluctant one to give it a try.  He went, but always passed on the clapping and marching.  It’s a theme in the kid’s life.  What others do, peer pressure, never meant shit to this guy.  In fact, I believe he goes purposely in the other direction whenever the situation arises.  Some could see this as thorny.  I see it as independence of thought. 

   Max was an indifferent ball player.  All right, he was crap.  One day, my Mom accompanied Andrea and I to the diamond to watch the kid play right field and walk or strikeout three times.  It was a toasty day and about four innings in, my Mom had had enough of the excitement that a twelve year old baseball game provides, and decided to leave.  Max was patrolling right field, probably counting dandelions, when he looked over and saw my Mom walking toward her car in the nearby parking lot.  He shouted “Grandma” and tore from the field without looking back.  While the coaches, players and fans looked on in bewilderment, Max ran up to my Mom and gave her a big hug and kiss.  His trip back to his post in right field was not performed with nearly the same amount of hurry or passion.  This guy has a big heart and loves his family and friends.

   One night, when Max was still in middle school, I had a very disturbing dream.  Not scary, disturbing.  It was about my own mortality and left me crying in bed at three o’clock in the morning.  When I tried to get some comfort from my partner in bed Andrea, she shook me off by wiggling her shoulders the way you would if an insect landed on your back (probably thought I had other intentions).  I walked the house, still shaken and crying.  I needed some human contact.  Rachel and Max slept in separate rooms upstairs and I made my way toward their rooms.  I sat on the edge of Ray’s bed and sobbed, hoping she would wake up and acknowledge my plight.  She did and groaned in an annoyed way, “Daddy”, stretching out the word to let me know that what she really meant was “Daddy, what in the hell are you doing here and why are you a psycho?”   Max was my last chance.  I sat on the edge of his bed and he woke up, leaning on his elbow, looking at me with curiosity.  “What’s wrong?”  As I told him about my dream, he put his arm around my back and looked at me intently.  He just listened.  I told him a bout the dream, but more importantly I unloaded about how much I loved my family and how frightening I found my own mortality to be.  I’m not sure he understood (it’s pretty heavy stuff for a teenager and it was pretty late at night), but he comforted me with a hug and allowed me to put my head on his shoulder and finish pouring out my heart.  Your Dad appearing out of nowhere and crying on the edge of your bed should be pretty freaky, but not to the big guy.  His compassion and listening belied his age and is a moment that I will never forget.

   Finally, something happened to me a few years back that involves Max and gives me a lump in my throat every time I think of it.  I drove to Mt. Pleasant after work one day to drop some things off to Max while he was a student at CMU.  For a while, his emails and phone conversations made me think that he was going through a rough stretch living off campus and dealing with the pressures of college and being away from home.  The items I was dropping off could have probably waited, but heading up seemed like a good idea.  We met at his apartment, I dropped off my goodies and we headed out to dinner.  We always dined at Qdobas, it was our thing.  Max got the chicken nachos and I got the fajita.  I moved the topics of conversation around a lot, hoping that whatever I felt might be bugging the big fella would come up.  Finally, after not getting what I wanted, I went direct and asked what might be bugging him.  He told me nothing specific was troubling him and I believed him.  He was going through some tough times he explained, being broke and working while going to school was a grind, but he was all right.  That shitty Qdoba grub never tasted better.  I was satisfied that Max was telling the truth, that he was tough in spirit and that he had the moxie to get through whatever CMU could throw his way.  I took him back to his apartment, gave him some love and whatever money I could muster and kissed him good bye.  I drove out of the parking lot in front of his apartment and headed for the main drag.  About fifty yards from his doorway, I looked back.  Max was still standing in his doorway looking at me and waving good bye.  But a strange thing happened.  I did not see Max, the twenty year old college student.  I saw Max, my ten year old son, my constant traveling companion, one of the loves of my life waving his hand at me.  I cried all the way to Alma.

Cheers!  Jim

PS  Max stopped by to eat dinner and do some laundry last week.  When he was done, he picked up his things and said he was heading home.  I had to stop him and remind him that, no matter where he goes and who he goes with, this little yellow house in Allen Park will always be his home.  After he left, I cried again.  What the fuck is wrong with me?