It is always amazing to me that siblings from the same mother and father can take such different trajectories in life, be infused with such different personalities, gifts and talents; and yet, like the church, we are all one family.
I have two brothers. My younger brother lives in Boston with his wife. He is a computer guy, and whenever I call him up because my internet browser is slow he will be the first to tell me he has no idea what the issue is and that I should just try restarting my computer or that maybe it is time to buy a new one. When we were little, he liked things the way he liked them. He had an entourage of stuffed animals and a well-worn blanket he was always sniffing. He was sensitive growing up and very sweet. He is still, with a great group of friends. He loves the Red Sox, craft beer, and running, and I'm thankful he has found someone to go through life with to enjoy those every day things.
My youngest brother lives in California with his wife and daughter. He works in Silicon Valley as an audio engineer. Growing up he loved music. He was in a band, played guitar, but always just had a really sharp mind and fascination with how things worked. I did too, but the difference was he was focused and worked hard at what he loved. While I was out hitchhiking the world and living the hobo life, he was setting up internships and finishing up grad school and getting his career in order. I always admired his analytical mind and his ability to succeed in his niche and find satisfaction in it. I think I was always kind of secretly jealous of all the engineering guys at Penn State, because they had their act together (unlike me) and seemed to have a pretty good path laid out for themselves. I know I wasn't cut from the same mold, that my mind kind of worked like that but that I would never be able to cut it, or maybe I just didn't want to work at it. Whatever the reason, I never felt that way about my brother. I was just always so very proud of him and impressed that he was able to work hard and turn his passion for sound into a great career at one of the top companies in the world.
Our family was not without drama. One night in our mid-twenties when we were all home for Christmas, I was not well, my mind was not well. I was at a low point in my life with no direction and not much going for me. I saw my middle brother as the embodiment of normalcy, a normalcy that eluded me, and it burned me from the inside out. In a sudden fit of irrational rage, I seized upon him by the neck until my dad came and tore me off of him. He did nothing to deserve it, and I still remember the fear in his eyes.
Not long after that I moved out and rented an apartment in town and a job as a waiter. A few months later, I would be in Maine...I had hopped a bus to New York, then another one from New York to Boston, couch surfed for a few days there, then another bus from Boston to Portland, then hitch hiked the rest of the way up the coast to a friend's cottage, where I stayed until I overstayed my welcome and had to find a place to rent.
I rented a room from an old lady in Camden, eating at the soup kitchen every day and going to the local library, and it was there that I first started to really wrestle with some serious demons. I was sitting in a rocking chair in my room one night, when my mom called me to tell me my dad was in a psych hospital, after suffering a psychotic episode of mania in a parking lot, and would I come home. The police came, they thought he was on drugs, because he was incoherent. He would tell me later he was trying to form words, but they wouldn't come out right. It was the same hospital I would find myself at not long after that.
I have good memories too. One trip my youngest brother and I took over a Thanksgiving break. We drove the old Saturn up to Vermont to hike the Long Trail in the Green Mountains for a few days. We listened to Modest Mouse on the drive up, and stayed in a cheap motel and ate big pancakes at real diners. I handrolled my cigarettes, and we took breaks in lean-to shelters, our boots resting on the crusted snow, and talked about religion and faith in God, and how hard it was for him to believe, and how desperately I wanted him to know what I knew. Everything was so quiet. The snow was a thick quilt of white.
I am grateful my parents stayed together during hard times, that I grew up with a mom and a dad in an in-tact family. I know not everyone has the same opportunity. Even though family can be messy at times, it is comforting to know I can be myself around them, that things do get better, and that we all generally like each other and get along and respect differences, and are in each other's lives in one way or another--even if we are spread out across the country. I guess when I was watching This Is Us tonight, it resonated with me that they are simply telling a story of a family, both immediate and extended, from the past to the present, for better or for worse, and made me think about my own.
Thank you, Lord, for the gift and love of family!
"Since God's plan for marriage and the family touches men and women in the concreteness of their daily existence in specific social and cultural situations, the Church ought to apply herself to understanding the situations within which marriage and the family are lived today, in order to fulfill her task of serving."
(St. Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio)