10:45 p.m.
Pasadena, California ~ Saturday, August 16, 2014
Jay and Charlie fought as much as most siblings did when they were kids, but Jay had been pretty good with his little brother. I remembered that one time when Charlie was distracted by the handheld videogame he was playing on the way to school and forgot to get off the bus with the other third graders. It wasn’t until the bus driver reached Jay’s junior high that Charlie realized his mistake.
He was panicked, embarrassed and on the verge of tears, but Jay raced over to him right away. He stood by Charlie and calmed him down. Walked him right into the junior-high office and asked the secretary if he could call home because his kid brother had accidentally missed his stop.
By the time I came to pick Charlie up to drive him back to the elementary school, Jay, who was still waiting with him in the office, had made his little brother laugh until he was almost rolling on the floor. Made Charlie feel like he was the coolest sibling ever to visit North Lake Junior High.
What might have distracted Charlie this time? And where was his big brother when he needed him?
It wasn’t fair to blame Jay, I knew, even to the slightest degree, for not knowing where Charlie was at that moment. Jay lived in another part of the state, several hours away. He couldn’t be held responsible for keeping his kid brother safe anymore. And neither, I realized, could I.
Charlie was twenty-eight years old.
Not a boy. A man.
He earned his own income. He made his own decisions. He lived by himself in a place he paid for each month. He was fully and completely independent.
But, just because I knew intellectually that I’d already done “my duty” as a parent in raising a relatively conscientious, tax-paying and productive citizen, it didn’t mean my heart could just let him go.
Every time one of my boys walked out the door and away from me, pieces of my very soul broke off and traveled with them. To paraphrase the late, great Walter Cronkite, “And that’s just the way it was.”