Two days before my 20th birthday, my brother e-mailed me and asked for my phone number. He wrote and said that he would call me on my big day. The prospect of a call from Alan was exciting enough to eclipse my whole day’s celebration. Even if my day had proceeded as usual, without any birthday revelry, that call would have been the cake and the icing on top. He had been in China for the previous six months; I had spoken to him by phone once and received maybe five responses to my numerous e-mails.
The day went by with calls from people I knew in Rome, Casablanca, Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles. Lunch passed, dinner was over, and the party had started. With my phone close by, I went about the evening, drinking more and more, expecting that most important call from China at any moment. After an alcohol-induced emotional outpouring, I finally went to sleep with a broken heart. I told myself that the phones leading out of his small town might have been down for the day, or maybe his calling card had run out.
I began turning inward over the event, feeling a little bit silly for setting myself up for such deep disappointment. I wrote it off as nothing, telling myself that he was selfish and that I should have anticipated it. Memories of the other times when I had felt the same way flooded back, and the thought would not leave my mind that his failure to call was not just an accident, but the reality of our relationship. As the younger sister, I had looked up to him, even idolized him for all of my life. This was to be expected, because I simply loved him more. Or loved him in a different way.
We have an old anecdote in my family, which Alan relates to all of his friends, about the way I always wanted his food. From our toddler days into high school, I always asked for a taste of whatever he was eating. During his pubescent growth spurts, he would cook entire packages of frozen taquitos as an afternoon snack. I would never have thought to make any for myself, but I would always ask for one of his. One taquito out of 20 seemed reasonable enough. But it was always given reluctantly, and only after our mother had told him to share. Even recently, I have heard Alan go on about my demanding eating habits, always edging in on what is his. Though related partly in jest, I know there is something more there.
When Alan and I were aged four and six, our grandmother from out of state came to visit. I do not remember much of her stay, but Alan’s mention of the trip over the years has burnt a memory into my mind. Apparently, she took us to the local toy store, and treated us each to a toy. Later that week, Alan saw me with a new toy and asked me where I got it. I responded that Grandma Gigi had bought it for me. He tells me that he cried, disbelieving and jealous that his cute, blonde little sister who “always got everything.”
Today, Alan and I have a good relationship. We generally respect and support one another, have many interests in common and love each other. Around the time when we both were in high school, we started saying “I love you” over the phone, in person, or whereever it felt right. Our childhood fighting was over and we became kind, even affectionate with one another. If we had never shared anything in common or if we did not like each other as people, I would not think about our relationship so much. We would simply be family, related by blood, catching up only over holidays.
However, we have a deeply connected sibling relationship, and for that reason, a forgotten birthday phone call meant something to me. The melodramatic explanation that “I simply love him more” may seem drastic and exaggerated, but considering our childhoods-and especially the way he often felt slightly displaced by a younger sister-suggests a deeper meaning in the forgotten call.
Perhaps our positions in the family have had an effect on the people we have become, and the relationship we have shared. Alan, as the older sibling, is someone who does what he must do, no matter the effect it may have on others. Perhaps that explains the lack of contact he has maintained from China. He has been acclimated to guard what is his, whereas I am someone who was never threatened by a younger sibling taking my food, attention or possessions.
We do love in different ways, and go about life on our own terms. While I would cut down vines in a rainforest, cross a crocodile-filled swamp and brave the savannah to call him on his birthday, he would castrate any man who did me wrong. And he has always delivered, if in his own time.
Early Sunday morning, two days after my birthday, I awoke to my ringing phone. As my eyes shot open, I knew it would be him. I leapt down off of the top bunk and lunged for the phone. With a deep breath, I answered that call from China, and it was all I had wanted it to be.
