For most of my childhood summers my brother was my best friend. Away from the daily circumstance of school, and without cel phones or the internet, we lost touch with school friends that we had grown accustomed to seeing daily. Stranded in the same house, raised by the same parents, my brother and I are the only two people in the world who shared almost the exact same upbringing. No one, not even Suzie, has a keener understanding of what it was like to grow up in the Ilagan household, with all its requisite glories and flaws and luxuries and discipline. My brother shared all those things for the first decade and a half of our lives before we went our own ways and forged our own paths.
Back then, it was just him and me, and I didn’t mind in the least.
TONIGHT IT’S VERY CLEAR, AS WE’RE BOTH LYING HERE
THERE’S SO MANY THINGS I WANT TO SAY
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, I WOULD NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE
SOMETIMES I JUST FORGET, SAY THINGS I MIGHT REGRET
IT BREAKS MY HEART TO SEE YOU CRYING
I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU, I COULD NEVER MAKE IT ALONE.
We had friends in the neighborhood that we’d play with ~ Michael and Eric and Jennifer ~ but I was more content when it was the two of us, riding our bikes across town to grab baseball cards and candy, or down to the small corner aquarium store to see the fish. There was a huge 100-gallon tank of freshwater fish near the back of the store, filled with colorful decorations and large denizens slowly swimming above its graveled expanse. I remember the owner of the store, Linda, and how we could mark the passing of time in her hair and, later, her pregnancies. She had a short hair phase, then there was a tragic perm moment (from which she never quite recovered) and finally ~ thankfully ~ she started to grow it out. By then we had almost grown up.
I AM A MAN WHO WILL FIGHT FOR YOUR HONOR
I’LL BE THE HERO YOU’RE DREAMING OF
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
This song, an unabashed love song, is a strange one to intertwine among memories of my brother, but its essence could be read on a grander scale than finite romantic love. It was part of ‘The Karate Kid’ ~ a movie that I saw with my brother, and it filled the radio of one of those childhood summers. In the hot and humid nights, back when heat and humidity didn’t bother us (childhood has a way of making us weather-resistant), we’d listen to this on the radio, caring not a whit for Peter Cetera’s cheesy delivery or the banal cliches of knights in shining armor and castles far away. What did we know of romantic love at that point? Nothing, and we didn’t want to know. Sometimes children have all the wisdom.
Instead, we reveled in brotherly love, even if we would never say or acknowledge it. We emboldened one another. It’s often been assumed that my brother was more of a risk-taker than me, that he would make questionable choices and do occasionally-foolish things, acting as daredevil to my more sensible angel. That wasn’t really the case when we were kids. My brother was most often the voice of safety and reason when I wanted to do something really stupid. He was the one concerned about Mom and Dad and what they would do to us if we got caught. I just had the confidence to assume we wouldn’t get caught, and most of the time that carried us through. Like when I stole an expensive (or so I thought at the time) baseball card from one of the local dealers. We were browsing with a friend, and on a dare or desire to impress my brother (I could do crazy-ass daring things too!) I stuffed some rookie card down the front of my shorts into my underwear. I thought I did it furtively, but the owner, a cigar-chomping rotund gentleman with straggly yet curly hair that was running away from the top of his head, must have seen me, and immediately stopped me from leaving the store. Alerted at this point by the accosting, but unaware of what I had done, my brother looked at me and waited. The owner said he saw me stuff a card down my pants. I denied it, and through sheer force of will and defiance, one of the only times in my life when I have been so bold, I stood my ground and dared him: “If it’s in my pants, why don’t you come and get it?” (I didn’t watch all those soap operas for nothing.) He backed away and just yelled at us to get out of his store. We got on our bikes and quickly pedaled away. Amused and a little irate, my brother asked, because he didn’t quite believe me, whether I had taken the card. “Of course not,” I replied. Then I rode ahead of him a little, pulled the card from my underwear, and waved it in the air to show him without saying a word. Older brothers have been doing stupid shit to impress their younger brothers since the world began. Most of the time it doesn’t work.
YOU KEEP ME STANDING TALL, YOU HELP ME THROUGH IT ALL
I’M ALWAYS STRONG WHEN YOU’RE BESIDE ME
I HAVE ALWAYS NEEDED YOU, I COULD NEVER MAKE IT ALONE…
We had our arguments, like all brothers will, and at the end of them we’d separate for a while, cooling off in our respective corners. The world would turn a little dimmer whenever that happened. I remember one time we were building a fort in the forest and we got into a ridiculous fight about how to make it or something, and it ended with us going off to make our own separate forts.
We eyed each other suspiciously, scrambling for materials before the other could get them, racing to see who would finish first and whose would be the better. Neither of us ever won then. We were better as a team, stronger when we were together and on the same side. But sibling rivalry runs deep. We did not see that then. Our forts, and the loneliness that resulted from erecting them on our own, were emblematic of our struggle. We abandoned them. The summer storms ripped their walls of twigs apart. Every time we’d return after a heavy rain, more had washed away. The floor, which we had raked and swept and kept free of debris would be littered with leaves and branches. Deciduous boughs, bent and tied to form a canopy, broke free of their string and returned to their natural form, taking the make-shift ceiling with them. Summer could be as destructive as she was sunny.
I AM A MAN WHO WILL FIGHT FOR YOUR HONOR
I’LL BE THE HERO YOU’RE DREAMING OF
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
For a summer best friend, one could do a lot worse than my brother. He had the qualities I lacked but so often admired. He wore his sensitivity on his sleeve; I kept mine hidden. He was more open and raw about getting hurt, emotionally and physically; I kept my pain quiet and private. He was quick to play and please; I was quick to run and hide. Yet for all our differences, for all our childhood summers, those differences bound us together in ways I still don’t completely understand. We each seemed to supply what the other lacked, whether we realized it or not. But maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe we just wanted a playmate. When the sun was out, and the summer beckoned, the best thing to do was share it with someone.
IT’S LIKE A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR, FROM A LONG TIME AGO
JUST IN TIME I WILL SAVE THE DAY, TAKE YOU TO MY CASTLE FAR AWAY
And so we carved out our summer adventures. When my brother would journey out on his own or with a neighborhood friend, I’d sometimes stay behind and immediately regret it. At those times I’d stay inside, watching out the window like a dog waiting for its owner to come home, hoping they wouldn’t be gone for too long. Solitude was my resting stance, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be alone all the time, and certainly not on a sunny summer day.
It takes me a long time to feel safe and comfortable enough to make friends, so my brother was often my conduit to social interaction in those days. He was a talisman of sorts whenever I felt anxious about being accepted or part of the group. In that way, he was more like an older brother, and me his younger charge in need of a little help. He was better at talking to people whereas my shyness was crippling. He probably did more to bring me out of my shell than anyone else, and in his company I could feel bold and brash (and apparently bodacious enough to steal a baseball card). Without knowing it, my brother was the protective hero that I would so long for when the world turned its back and closed its doors.
I AM A MAN WHO WILL FIGHT FOR YOUR HONOR
I’LL BE THE HERO YOU’RE DREAMING OF
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
All these years later, summer is still the season that seems to bring us together as brothers again. Christmas does that in quicker and shorter fashion, but summer, for whatever magical reason, finds my brother and I able to see each other more, to visit and hang outside while his kids swim, or have a sleep-over without having to worry about anyone getting up to go to school. We’re able to travel easier and get to see each other more in the summer months.
It reminds me of our childhood in the best way.
WE’LL LIVE FOREVER, KNOWING TOGETHER
THAT WE DID IT ALL FOR THE GLORY OF LOVE.
WE DID IT ALL FOR LOVE.
