Memory is selective, as everyone knows. Some memories are pleasant and some are not. The memory I wish to talk about now goes back seventy years when I was just fourteen. It relates to an experience that I could not understand, strangely enough, until recently.
Back then I had a penchant for drawing and painting and to acknowledge the Thanksgiving holiday, I had the impulse to make a Thanksgiving card for my mother. I folded a sheet of paper in half and again in half so that it resembled the shape, more or less, of commercial cards. With colored pencils I drew a picture of a bouquet of flowers in a vase. I was persnickety and fussy about precision and neatness in art so I labored over the little picture and then again on the brief message on the inner page. Did I say that I was fourteen at the time and my older brother was eighteen. Before I had the chance to deliver this loving gift to my mother, my brother came by, noticed the card, picked it up, and on the spot tore it apart. I was stunned, dumbfounded and disconcerted but not really angry or outraged. I didn’t go crying, at that age, to my mother or anyone else. I didn’t look for retaliation or even for an explanation. My bother was not mean, certainly never mean to me. In fact, he came to my defense on a number of occasions when he thought I was being picked on by older boys. He would defend me even if it meant a fistfight. But I was perplexed by his rash action.
I had a sense this was something over which he had no control. It was a matter of an impulse without an easy answer, something so deep that he probably could not have explained why.
It dawned on me quite recently that my brother was eighteen at the time, or, in other words, four years older than me. He was not a very good student and he never finished high school. Instead he went to a vocational institute to learn a trade. At eighteen he was gnawing at the bit, as the expression goes, to get out of the house, to be on his own, to demonstrate his manliness, his readiness to tackle the world. He was tall and strong and good looking and interested in females. He was physical, loved the out-of-doors, and had a boat he used for camping trips on the Hudson River. At the same time lots of things were pressing in on him. He would be leaving the parental household very soon to strike out on his own. That fact was hardly part of my consciousness for I was thoroughly pre-occupied with myself.
I realize now how he must’ve felt as he was about to lose the comfort of motherly love while I, four years younger, would continue to enjoy that blessing for at least another four years. It must have been infuriating. Here I was kissing up to our mother while he was about to be bereft. These two conflicting conditions could only be painful for my brother. Without the possibility to give voice to his anguish he took out his feelings on my little Thanksgiving card. His action was clearly spontaneous, instinctive, and irrepressible. As I said, I was really not so much angry as bewildered and for seventy years I could recall that moment, even talk about it at times, without understanding it until recently. A few weeks ago I had the occasion to speak with my brother over the phone. He and his family live on the West Coast, and I and my family live on the East Coast. He will be eighty-nine this year and I will be eighty-five. We are both slowly losing our memories but the last thing he said in the telephone conversation was: “You are four years younger than me.” Of all the things to remember at this point in our lives was the difference in our ages! That fact spilled out freely now as it could not at the time he first struggled with the thought. I just laughed and laughed.