I am three years younger than my brother. It was a small enough gap for us to be relevant to one another, but too large for us to share much in common. Even if we’d been born closer together, I doubt we’d have had much in common. I am thoughtful. I suppose he is, as well, but in a different way. It’s hard for me to imagine what he thought of when we were young. My memories of childhood are so different from his. We’ve talked about it some, but memories of childhood are vague impressions interspersed with snapshot recollections of questionable veracity.

My brother hardly knows me. I’m good with that. I hardly know him. What I do know isn’t enough to really want to know more. I suppose this feeling is colored by those impressions and snapshots of our childhood. He wasn’t very nice. Older siblings often aren’t, but I think he really resented me. I feel like he really felt I’d come and taken something that was his. It’s hard to have warm feelings for someone who’s felt that way about you.

Sometimes I think maybe I ought to get to know him more. Our parents just had their 47th anniversary. We don’t have any other siblings. Someday it will be just he and I. We have a couple of cousins, but they grew up in another state, and we only saw them on holidays. At least my brother feels familiar.

He’s a know it all. He has opinions on nearly everything. Even things he knows very little about. And he voices his opinions at every opportunity. That characteristic can be incredibly irritating. Then again, it prevents him from trying to know me. Maybe he knows I prefer he not pry and offers all his opinions just to fill the space between us. That’s giving him an awful lot of credit.

We rarely speak on the phone. We say “love you” before hanging up. I’m not sure what that means. We live far from one another. We only see one another occasionally. Knowing he is somewhere though. Living his life. Having his opinions. It’s a comfort. Knowing that somewhere there is family.