Planned since yesterday to post the March 23 entries from my five-year Little Green Diary tonight [since it's March 23 again]. Wondered if I'd find any weather references about storms or rain or anything, but no.
1973: Joe came home!
[Joe was my nickname for OB, oldest brother, who has pretty much dropped out of touch with all of us for over 10 years...kind of an enigma. But my brother Will has seen him at least once if not a few times in that decade.]
1974: I took a bath. Sis took Irene and I to the Bergenfield library. I played Masterpiece with Maria and Sis.
1975: Palm Sunday! I like Ronald Brown a lot--wish he liked me! Beautiful day--"springish"!
But then I got an email from my cousin Linda this morning. She and I just reconnected, and I sent her the link to my blog so she could see pictures of the tree through the roof of our house. I also told her to read "Big Brother" on this blog, because she spent a lot of time with OB as a girl too.
Turns out Linda had already done some web sleuthing, when my Dad's phone wasn't working and she was trying to find him. She found a photo online of OB--he had a role in a film about mutant rats in NYC--and she also unearthed a recent NY Times article about a cool East Village hangout. He's quoted as one of the customers who likes it.
It scared me. It was jarring to see the photo. OB wasn't an actor when I knew him. Also, he changed his last name for the credits. Is he trying to hide from us? And the photo is scary because he's in his role for that horror film. I studied his beard, his hands, the way his hands are placed on the table. I haven't seen him in so long, it's almost as though he died, and now I'm studying him again, looking for the lines I remember, seeing shades of my grandfather in him somehow. Or searching for them. Maybe searching for a common thread to keep us together.
To read him quoted in the Times was disturbing too. I'm glad he is alive and well and socializing with people. I was afraid he was a hermit, a recluse. That's what happens when someone drops out of your life--you imagine, you fear, you wonder and worry.
The thing that really makes me sad is that he is not far from us--Sis works in the city, Will lives in the city, and I go there a lot for work and play--and we might pass him on the street, we could walk in and out of the same coffee shop one day. It's just profoundly sad. And why, for what? In fact, Sis thought she passed him on the street one day but then decided it wasn't him.
I find it extemely coincidental that on March 23, the day my diary says "Joe came home!" in the voice of an obviously adoring little sister is the day I catch a glimpse of my lost brother for the first time in more than 10 years.
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wow, alice. that is haunting. do you ever consider reaching out again?
ReplyDeleteYes, I have considered that, and now that I've seen the photo and the article, I'm thinking about my brother a lot. I just feel like he wholly rejected all of us, and it's mystifying because we don't know why. He doesn't return our calls when we phone. It's pretty obvious he'd rather leave us behind, or completely separate himself from us. So it's hard to try to crack through that. We've all swallowed our pride and tried. My Dad calls him a fair amount and he rarely calls back. My Dad is 87 and won't be around forever. The whole thing is worrisome. I know my Dad wishes they could be in touch, that we all could be in touch. Sometimes he'll tell me stories about how he and my mom swung my brother, their first child, through the waves on Cape Cod. It's pretty heartbreaking in my eyes. Thanks for asking. Love alice xo
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