THE ISOLATION JOURNALS - DAY 14 - A BROTHER'S LOVE

Today’s prompt:

Write a love note to yourself. Write it from someone else’s point of view. It can be a real person or a made-up person. Start with the line: Dear [your name], If you could see what I see, you’d see that you are ______. 

Write about what they see in you, what they find beautiful. I call this practice “In the Voice of Someone Who Loves You.”

A Brother’s Love

People who know me will be unsurprised that I couldn’t do today’s prompt. I don’t like being the center of attention. I don’t like seeing photos of myself or hearing my voice on the answering machine. I can’t imagine writing about how others see me.

Anyway, I’ve already received the love note that the prompt describes. It’s from a real person, the voice of someone who loved me very much telling me how he sees me. It’s the final few paragraphs of a blog entry my brother wrote several years ago thanking the people who supported him during a difficult year. I reprint it here with the caution that this is not how I see myself – but how blessed am I to have been so seen and so loved by another?

***

Finally, I want to thank my sister Annie. The family joke is that we refer to her as "Saint Annie" because she is so good. Growing up, she was the perfect child, and little has changed since then. Annie flew in from San Francisco one year ago to accompany me in driving my wife to prison. She didn't want me to drive home alone. That night, she was there to catch me when I finally fell off my emotional precipice.

This past year, she came every 3 months and stayed for days. She would play with the girls and cook and clean and shop and joke, and allowed the kids to forget, if only for a few days, that mommy wasn't home. All the while of course, she had a full life back in San Francisco as a full-time attorney, mother of 2 boys, wife, mentor, active member of a breast cancer survivor group, and much more. But, busy as she was, she always came like clockwork, and she will be here again this week, right on time. She established and maintains this blog site. And she does all of this without fanfare, without pity, and always with hope.

With apologies to Annie for plagiarizing myself, I want to end by reprinting part of a letter I recently wrote to her. (Actually, it's an approximation since I didn't save the letter.)

Our lives are not always the epic novels that we would like them to be. In reality, they are more like a collection of short stories that share a common theme, like a 'Winesburg, Ohio' or 'The Dubliners.' One of my favorite stories from our childhood is the story of how you came to be.

Mom only wanted to have one child. Being the youngest of 800 children, she only knew her parents as old people. As a youth, tuberculosis had nearly killed her, and her first pregnancy was especially difficult and was complicated by a breech birth. But she had survived, and she had given birth to a son. She had fulfilled her duty. She was done.

Then one day, she saw me getting into a confrontation with another boy. She watched, unseen, as the other boy and I were about to come to blows. Then suddenly, the other boy's sister arrived. Now it was 2 against 1, and sheepishly, I backed down. Afterwards, mom thought how sad it was that I had no one to defend me, how sad it would be that I would be all alone when they were gone. I needed a companion, she concluded. And that's how you came to be.

Of course, you are more than just my companion. We have both gone on to create families of our own, taken on responsibilities and built careers. And yet, I have never forgotten mom's initial intention. Now, I find myself in another struggle, but I am not afraid, and I will not back down this time, because now, I am not alone. I have my sister with me, and it is 2 against 1.