Big Brother Is Watching You (if you're lucky)...

Family folklore tells of an eleven year old young man who packed a bag and prepared to go out into the world because another baby – the ninth big fat baby in eleven years, in fact – was moving into his family’s house.  He wasn’t planning to leave because he had a problem with this new (big fat) baby.  No.  He was just trying to be helpful and accommodating. 

This young man was simply expressing his concern that maybe there wasn’t enough room or that his mother had too much on her plate.  Thank God his mother talked some sense into him because that big fat baby needed him there.  ALL of the other eight babies needed him there.  You see, this young man was The Big Brother.  He was, in so many ways, the captain of the ship, the lighthouse that guided it, and the cruise director who set the tone.

At sixteen, this young man packed up his bell bottoms and drum sticks and left with his mother’s blessing to chase his dreams.  The nuns never understood his long hair or fashion sense, his grandparents didn’t quite get that music could ever be a Real Job and strangers very likely judged the decision to let him go, but his focus was clear and his heart told him it was the right path.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I was that big fat baby and I’m talking about my brother Tim – the eldest of the brood.  As the baby, I can’t pretend to know what experiences made him who he is.  Personally, I think he was just a reincarnate very old man who forgot to revert to childhood when he came back to earth.  What I KNOW is that he’s always been the beacon of light for so many – not just his siblings – and that he played a big role in shaping who I am.

I don’t mean to say that he Left Home.  He never did.  He simply built a west wing away from the primary Albert residence in the east.  I only recently learned that when we loaded up the station wagon and moved away from our hometown to Baltimore, Tim was actually the one who chose our new home.  I don’t know what he was thinking at the time, but in hindsight, he set us up in a real neighborhood with schools and shops and people who became lifelong friends to our entire family.  He set us up, and then he packed up the aforementioned bell bottoms and drumsticks and returned to the hometown to set up base.

While we were going about our life, planting new roots, our Big Brother was on the road.  Making music.  Making connections.  Following his dreams.  But he never ever left us behind.  We were with him.  In his thoughts.  In his letters.  In his phone calls.  He sent us stories from the road and I kept a bulletin board map of the United States with pushpins marking every place he’d been.  I knew which pin represented a flat tire or a Blues Brothers-style caged stage.

In the summers, our father was supposed to have custody visits.  But really, given the choice between staying with a night-shift coal miner we barely knew or our rock star big brother, whose house do you think we chose?  And somehow, the teenage hippie rock star proprietor of the Albert West Wing managed to open the door, make sure we were fed, reasonably clean, entertained and, most importantly, together and happy.  I didn’t know how he did it.  I still don’t fully understand it.  I know he had the assistance of many who stood by with safety nets: grandparents, aunts, and a number of roommates who joined the force, but the bulk of the weight was on him.

Maybe it was a bit of a commune.  It was the 70s, after all.  All my 7 year old self cared about was the sense of freedom and big adventure that lived at Tim’s House.  My adult self knows that along with freedom, there was security.  Along with adventure, there was safety.  Above the chaos, there was LOVE.

In these summers, I received an education that you can’t get at any Ivy League institution (but maybe they should offer it – you hear me, Harvard?).  Certainly, it was a little unorthodox, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I honed my reading skills on a huge collection of underground comics.  Perhaps grownups wouldn’t approve of the lessons of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Zap Comix, or even Mr. Natural, but I loved them and found them very educational.  I learned about horticulture.  I learned arts and crafts (little fingers are useful for rolling small pieces of paper).  I learned philosophy from any number of friends who passed through the house.  I learned to do yoga and fry plantains.  I learned to improvise a meal with whatever assortment of food was available.  I learned about diversity and acceptance and I learned to enter any room with the belief that I was supposed to be there and the ability to bluff my way through if questioned. 

Most of all, I learned that attitude is everything and that taking a risk isn’t really a risk at all if your heart tells you the net will be there.  And if the net isn’t there, a Big Brother will be.

At the end of the summers, we little brothers and sisters would return to the main Albert house with suntans, tangled hair, dirty feet, completely happy nourished souls and, most importantly, stories, memories and new skills.  For some of us, it was a new song learned.  For others, it was newly realized knowledge about who we are and belief in ourselves.

I don’t think Tim WANTED to be the patriarch of the family, but that’s the way it is.  I think it’s natural for the eldest to be the leader.  In a long line of hard-laboring blue collared workers who saw college as the only alternative, our Big Brother proved to us that we could do or be whatever we wanted and that dreams are worth following.  He even proved to our grandparents that music is a REAL job!!!

Those summers are long behind us.  Of course, I will always remember riding in the band van with orange fur on the dash, sneaking in the side door of nightclubs and napping under the keyboard while the funk band rehearsed.  I’m sure my husband and kids are sick of hearing the tales.  But the real story behind it all is that our Big Brother has always had our backs.  Probably half of us have lived with him at some point.  I know we’ve all turned to him when we needed a voice of reason and he’s never stopped taking care of us. 

It’s not just us…our Big Brother has been Big Brother to countless others.  He’s been Big Brother to friends who’ve needed to be bailed out – both literally and figuratively.  Whether heads need thumping or spirits need lifting, Big Brother Tim is there.  When our father needed some tough big brother love, Tim did it.  When any of us still need a head thump, we get it. 

I hope that as years have passed, we actual brothers and sisters have become less needy.  My brother deserves a break.  But I suspect that he will still be the go-to call for many at 2 in the morning who will start a conversation with “Man, I’m really sorry to call you so late….” And I know that he will be there to quietly save the day.

 

Happy Birthday, my brother.  Thanks for all the You that you are and all the You that you’ve been.